Lady Hope
by indiaga
Summary: This is the sequel to Silk and Diamonds, so read that before reading this. Hopefully will satisfy. Please review as it makes both Kartik and I extremely happy. In very different ways.
1. Prologue

**Well, this is the sequel to the fanfic 'Silk and Diamonds', so I would recommend reading that before starting this (yes, I know it's long). This is juts an introductory bit, though – my chapters won't actually be this short. Hope it intrigues. **

**(Dis)Claimer: I am actually Libba Bray. No, really, I am. Oh, I'm not? Oh. Gosh. Well then. Learn something new every day.**

Morning dawns.

As with every half-light, I am young and fresh, whole and pure. New. I remember nothing.

And then it comes. Slowly, a malicious trickle of a memory from long ago, lives past. And then the flood.

Pippa is dead.

She lies, quiet and still, in unforgiving soil far from here. Far from us. Far from everything that ever caused her pain. I remember how the sight of her mother's tears caused me so much hatred. It turns inwards. I understand the red welts that thread across Ann's wrists. They have begun once more, and I do not have the strength to stop them. I do not care enough.

Felicity is Felicity, always and forever. Grief has made her beautiful. The childish frivolity has left her face, and now she is nothing but high cheekbones and icy elegance.

And what of I? What have I become, with the relentless weight of death on my shoulders?

I am what you will make me.

**Short, I know, but this is a prologue to the sequel. Just to let you all know where exactly they all 'are'.**


	2. Feeling

**This is done in a stream of consciousness way, but the rest won't be. I seem to have got into the habit of writing like this. But the mystery will soon begin, darlings.**

I will kiss Felicity. I will kiss her everything, and it will force us to abandon the memories for just a minute. Just a moment. Do you know what it is, to have pain dragging you slowly apart every conscious hour of the day? I would like to be able to say, that when I sleep, I dream of her. But I do not. It would seem as though I am not in possession of a subconscious conscience.

When I dream, it is of him. Every tiny inch of him. The taste of his neck, cinnamon, musk, lust. The feel of him inside me. Of me inside him. When we are joined, truly joined, I am flooded with him. And I am content.

Yes, I am promiscuous. I am degenerate. I am flawed. In some way, I think that we all are.

Life carried on. Somehow, it did. She was dead. She was buried. The school hung black banners across the Great Hall and then replaced them with jollier Christmas colours – red and green and ribbons on the giant tree. She was forgotten. Respected, mourned, forgotten. And I understood. I am ashamed to say that I was relieved when we were no longer expected to live our lives in sombre faces and tear-waxy cheeks. When I heard something funny, I wanted to laugh. When I though of Pip, I wanted to share it. Silence can be bitter.

Kartik grows so beautiful. I can hardly bear it. Each day he grows more into the man I wish to spend the rest of my life with. When he shadows into my room at night and takes me far, far away, to the floor of the forest, the rim of the lake, the warm, dry, softness of the boathouse, and makes loves to me, I am allowed to forget and just be. I am. I am alive, desired, loved, growing. I am not dead, and I refuse to feel guilty.

When he kisses my face, my hair, my neck, my breasts and the inside of my thighs, when he gazes down at me with longing as we couple, the intense, dangerous vulnerability of his eyes fills me up and I often end up crying. I cannot live without his grip on my hips, his warm breath heating my cheek, his buttery rich laugh echoing through the trees. I cannot be without the olive of his chest, the strength of his arms, the passion of his movement. I cannot be expected to ever be without him.

Ann sleeps soundly, and when she does, I tiptoe my way to Felicity's lonely bedroom, her luxuries carelessly strewn around to give the room the appearance of two. She grabs me, pushes me to the wall and explores me with her mouth, her eyes, her compelling need to feel alive. When she makes me moan as Kartik does. When she and I, hot and exhausted, fall asleep on her blanket strewn bed, together, naked, in a curious kind of love, then I feel whole.

Ann slices with satisfaction into the creamy blue of her wrists, stares, transfixed, at the sight of her blood running down her arms and twisting, spiralling, falling to the floorboards, trapped in a dance of hatred and fear.

We all try our best to keep feeling alive, and our best is not good enough.

**I always like to read reviews. Make me happy. **


	3. Breaking

The light is clotted and grey. It seeps through our window like cold through our bones, and that is what wakes me. The floorboards are cloudy with dust. Ann is sleeping still.

I cherish the cold of these mornings. When I wake before the rest of the school, the rest of the world. When the dew sprinkled over the grass is fresh and untouched. When I can smell early morning firewood burning lazily, drifting over from the gypsy camp. When I see the silver of the surface of the lake folding and crinkling gently in the breeze. When the night birds retreat, sleepy and content, to their lairs, and the young larks erupt from their hiding places, saluting the rosy blush of dawn with hopeful little songs. I can hear no-one else in the world. I see only the sky.

Felicity slips past the door and comes to stand next to me. She is in nothing but her chemise and I see her outline through the gauzy material. Once, it would have embarrassed me. I would have looked away and blushed furiously. Once, I would have gazed at her as though she was something foreign, mysterious, dangerous.

Now I know she is.

Her fingers gently intertwine with mine, and we are still for the longest time, listening to Ann's clear, heavy breathing and thinking of all of the places in the world we could retreat to. Her legs, china white and elegant, lean indolently against mine. They are both furiously hot and blindingly cold at the same time.

"Do you think it will ever stop? Ever truly go away?" She does not look at me as she speaks, but her voice is clear and true.

"Yes. I had my mother for sixteen years, and then I lost her. And I am alive. I am still living. It will pass."

We are quiet, feeling hope and trust and grief in the warmth of each other, blood pulsing through shared veins and soft fingertips grazing thighs, and then she speaks. She is so soft I can barely make out her words.

"I'm not sure I want it to."

* * *

Breakfast is a tawdry affair. Cecily has a cold, and is constantly sniffing and snorting in the most unattractive way. Ann dutifully offers up her handkerchief, but Cecily refuses, a look of horror and revulsion spreading like butter across her face. Gosh, yes, better not use _Ann's_ handkerchief, you might catch a scholarship and then where would you be?

Ann's face is glazed as she calmly replaces the handkerchief in her pocket; seemingly oblivious to the cruel brittle giggles erupting from around the table. Such pain must numb across the years, and she had had so many years.

French is first. Mademoiselle LeFarge bustles in, a beatific smile set firmly in place. We ask and beg and plead to know the good news, but she refuses to let on, instead telling us to turn to a partner and begin a French conversation whilst she listens to each of us in turn. This is both good and bad news. It means that, whilst she is far away listening to Cecily spout some ghastly, sleep-inducing, faultless French, Felicity, Ann and I will be able to talk about whatever takes our fancy. However, it also means that Mademoiselle LeFarge is going to want to hear me speak a language I can barely comprehend.

Felicity moves her desk closer to Ann and I and looks seductively at me from under her eyelashes. "Gemma, I do believe you need to put in a lot of practise before she comes round. _Non_?" she taunts me with her perfect pronunciation and I smirk back, eternally grateful for her to have started the smiles. Ann turns to me and is about to start attacking me with French phrases I do not care about when Felicity gives her a cutting glance. This is all it takes, for Ann to fall silent, and, secretly, I curse Felicity for using that power over her friends. She knows Ann.

"Ann, I was toying with you. I'm sure there is nothing in the world Gemma would like doing more than practising her _Francais_, but, _malheureusement_, I am not in _le_ mood." She gives me that mocking smile that I once fell in love with, and Ann smirks in my direction. Smirking is malicious, my grandmother once told me, but I am always happy to see Ann doing something just a little bit wrong. Small rebellious acts. That is how we survive.

And then I realise the bigger problem. After Felicity's statement, we fall silent. We have nothing to say to one another. What is there? Can we, should we, allot blame, and try to run away from our own involvement? Could Felicity be cruel enough to tell the truth and whisper to Ann that she wished she had stayed dead instead of Pippa? Could I look at them both and tell them that my guilt is curious, and fleeting, and that sometimes I wish I could slip away inside myself and never come out again? Can even best friends tell each other everything? Should we each have our own little secrets, something deep within ourselves, that only we know about? Does that make us real and needed?

The silence is overpowering. I am surrounded by excited, mellifluous chatter and yet I have never felt so isolated. I glance around, at Ann's miserable face, at Felicity tautening her jaw to keep the tears from spilling, frenzied, down her cheeks. And I realise I must say something to break this spell, and, whatever it is, it is coming.

"I want to return to the realms."

It is curious, how a simple statement, a declarative, imperative, interrogative, exclamative, can have the most changing effect. Ann widens her eyes and says nothing, but there is a dull glimmer of hope in her eyes that swells and breaks into a crescendo of longing. Felicity does not look at me for the longest time, but when she does the tears are gone and her eyes sparkle with danger. Like broken glass in water. The invisible threat that pulls you closer. That is my Felicity.

And then there is the smile, the full, ripe smile that I had missed so very much, and then we are giggling like fools, and we do not care, for we are only children.

* * *

Art. Miss Moore. The wonderful chalky, oily, peaty smell of the art room fills my head as we enter. The spell is well and truly ripped asunder, and we are hanging on each other's arms like nothing ever happened and no one ever died. We giggle and whisper and secretly taunt Cecily's sizeable nose, red and scaly with her cold, and do hysterically bad impressions of her face as she refused Ann's kindness. We gurn and roll our eyes and draw up our upper lips until there are deep grooves running like railway tracks between the corners of our mouths and the flares of our noses, and we look like pinched old spinsters. Ann is the funniest. Her talent for mimicry extends to Cecily, generously encompassing her nasal, brittle voice and little affectations in her manner. She has us in stitches as we walk from French to Art. She has changed her posture, her way of walking. She is now snooty and upright as though someone has impaled her on a metal spike and she does not want to let on. She curls her lip and tosses her hair out of her face as she speaks, her eyes idly inspecting her spotless cuff, desperate to try and show off a new ring or ugly brooch.

"...And so I was saying to Georgiana – Penelope, you know, my cousin, Lady Poddington-Snobbytoff, that Spence does seem to be really going down the proverbial pan, if you will excuse my language, and I'm sure you will, because I am Cecilia Templeton and you must all bow before me. But, yes, what with those ghastly scholarship monstrosities lining our hallways and being brazen enough to offer their diseased hankies when one has a red and dripping nose, I mean, well, I could hardly believe it." Felicity splutters with mirth and Cecily notices us repeatedly glancing in her direction, delighted when Ann imitates an expression or habit exactly right. She approaches, her gaze turning sour as she hears us quieten down instantly and begin to talk about the health of the queen.

"...Yes, I've heard that she has a terrible cold – well, hello, Cecily! But, yes, anyway, a frightful cold, just like our dear Miss Temple here – still, I suppose one must look for the best in all situations, because, with your standing and bloodline, I'm sure you've caught the royal cold and not the ghastly version we must endure." Felicity links arms with our target and smiles enigmatically, and I can see Cecily in complete turmoil. On one hand, Felicity's words were meant to sting, and, indeed they did, but the intimate way Felicity is now treating her reminds her of the old days, and I can tell that she is desperate to cling on to that innocence.

"Don't be silly, Fee, I have a normal old cold like the rest of you get." She smiles and tries to cosy up, but Felicity is already pulling away and gazing at her with icy distaste.

"Is that so? Well, then, why were you so rude earlier as to refuse Miss Bradshaw's offer of kindness in the form of a much needed handkerchief?" her tone is crisp and anonymous, and Cecily opens and closes her mouth several times, unsure of how the chasm appeared and how she can cross it and whether anyone wants her to. I must say, the impression created is one of a rather simple goldfish. A goldfish with a cold.

"Class!" miss Moore claps her hands and bades us all sit. There is no room near us, and we do not want her, so Cecily retreats, licking her wounds, to the comfort and banality of Martha and Elizabeth.

"Today, I have prepared a rather exciting lesson. It is yours to decide what we discuss – or rather..." and here she breaks off, scanning the classroom with those acute, kindly eyes, "the decision is Miss Doyle's."

I hear disgruntled whispers from behind me, but take no notice. Miss Moore approaches me with a battered, dusty top hat turned on its head, filled with little twists of paper. "Take one, Miss Doyle, but close your eyes as you're doing so." I obey, the paper gently scratching my fingertips as I search, blindly, for one that takes my fancy.

"Take as long as you wish, Miss Doyle." The voice is languid and playful, but I blush and snatch the one closest to my fingertips anyway. Handing it to her with an apologetic smile, she unfurls the roll of paper and stares at its contents for what seems like a very long time.

"What is it?" Felicity voice is thin and stretched.

"Very interesting, Miss Doyle. Of course, the exercise was completely random, there was no way you could have known, but, still ... very interesting." She tosses the scrap of paper my way, suddenly, and I reach out my hand and allow the paper to float gently into it.

The word, written on spidery handwriting, haunts me.

_Choice._


	4. Falling

* * *

Choice.

The word hangs in the air. She is trying me, testing me, and I will not fail her.

"Do you have anything to say on the matter, Miss Doyle?"

"Nothing whatsoever, Miss Moore."

There is nervous chatter, excited laughter. I have them in pieces with just a few well-placed words. I feel faint at the power I could hold over them if they knew what I had deep inside me. Inside _me_.

"Really, Miss Doyle? How very interesting."

"That's my choice."

"What, privacy?"

"It's as good a choice as any."

"Yes, indeed." She stares at me for an unnervingly long time over the rims of her spectacles. I stand my ground. I am not fighting her, but I am holding fast. I am rebelling. Small rebellious acts.

"Miss Worthington, you're never short of things to say. Do you have any ideas?"

"Yes. Plenty."

"Care to enlighten us?"

"Not particularly."

There are widespread giggles now. Cecily glances at us, her eyes gleaming with delight. I gaze levelly back at her, until her grin falters and she looks away.

"Well then. Miss Bradshaw, I assume you're with your friends on this matter."

"Not at all. I have plenty of ideas."

This is what shocks the class into silence. Not Felicity, certainly not I. But Ann could be ruined by anything, everything. They will ruin her, and we all know that. Somewhere, they will ruin her. That is our sport.

"Miss Bradshaw?"

She clears her throat, pauses a second. Somehow, she has changed. She is changed. She gazes around the class, impassively, testing each girl with those calm, flat eyes. And she controls them. They are silent for her.

"Choice surrounds us. But it is closed choice. Jam _or_ marmalade, drawing _or_ painting, reading _or_ knitting. There is no 'you could have this, _or_ something else entirely'. There is no 'something else entirely' for us. But there might be. One day."

"Ladies shouldn't have too much choice. It confuses us."

"Yes, I can imagine that." Ann stares, smirking slightly at Cecily, who gazes back, her eyes wide and her top lip drawn back slightly in amazement. It makes her look unbelievably attractive, and I dig Felicity in the ribs to alert her. She stifles a giggle.

"But, you see, the thing is, Cecily, that you've all been telling me for the past ten years that I'm simply not a lady. Not like you. So, I guess that amount of choice would never confuse me. And I guess I might just get it."

We are quietly triumphant, and I am, once more, acutely glad that I am alive.

* * *

The rest of the day is uneventful. We are subtly rejected and revered by the other girls. They cannot understand quite how we could behave like that. They can understand very little of anything that matters.

I value the teaching of Miss Moore. Truly, I do. But there is something about the structured way in which our lessons are unstructured that made me what to stop and dig my heels in. I was not content to be a wilder flow, if I were still flowing. I wanted to stop, and make others stop in the process. Because when you stop, even for just a second, you begin to think, and thought is what will make the tides change. Until then, I will be quiet and small and reverse my fate.

* * *

Felicity meets Ann and I in our room after midnight. The candle spreads a condensed, wavering little pool of light on the floorboards at our feet. We sit, hold hands, and close our eyes. But for that moment, that tiny little particle of time before I will open my mind and become truly emancipated, if only for a night, I dream of him.

And then we are falling.

We are never sure when the transition took place, as always, and it sounds foolish to say that I was relieved by that little piece of continuity, that tiny fragment of Same that I took as a sign of what we were to find. And, indeed, on the surface, everything _is_ the same. Everything _is_ correct. But there is something deeper down, something black and bleak and startlingly intense. Instinctively, I glance towards the statue, marking the opening where the curtain of vines used to hang, dangerous and indolent, and I gasp, because I can finally see through my ignorance.

The statue is of Pippa.

We have seen her naked, of course, we have seen every little inch of each other. I danced with her in the moonlight, swam with her in the half-light of dusk, I ran as fast as deer on the fleet feet of cats at sunset across the river. But this statue is mesmerising.

She really was perfect. I am unabashed as I explore her figure with my eyes. No tiny flaws, no little bumps or bruises. Her hair seems wilder, her eyes wider and her lips fuller. She is achingly lovely, and, yes, it aches.

"Fee. Ann. Look."

The simplicity of my words is enough to attract their attention. They stand next to me, stare in the same direction, and Felicity sees it first. Her hand flies to her mouth just as Ann mutters, "Oh my."

"Our Pip is here."

Indeed she is.

We sit around the statue, and I vaguely feel foolish, descending into the throes of insanity – I am sure Tom would love the opportunity to test my sense and diagnose me with some hideous, terminal disease – but Felicity is gazing longingly at the statue and so I do not resist. Ann smoothes the skirt of her dress unconsciously under her fingers, and then moves on to plucking and twisting the glass surrounding her.

Yes, we talk to her, and laugh with her, and even begin, tentatively, to tell her jokes about the effects of her death. As usual, Felicity leads conversation, twisting it deeper and deeper into discomfort. But Ann is the one to say what we are really, truly thinking.

"We miss you, Pip."

The silence is amicable. We are each with our own thoughts, and I think that is when we will all be happiest. We can all keep secrets, I have decided. We should all hide away a little of our soul that only belongs to us, because, once you expose it, then it can be taken and distorted by anyone who cares enough. Secrets make the world black and bitter, but they also make the world. And that is very important.

* * *

We return from the realms, dusky eyed and dapple footed, and bid each other slumber of the sweetest kind. Ann's snores do not start immediately, and so I keep my thoughts very quiet and small.

"When Felicity comes at dawn, do you think I'm asleep?"

There is no right answer to this question – and no wrong one, either. There is, and only ever has been, the truth.

"Yes. We do."

"Well, I'm not."

The only sound is the wind batting branches gently against the glass. It taps, sending shivers down my spine, like skeletal fingers. The shadows thrown through the thin drapes twitch and grin eerily. The world comes alive when we are asleep.

"I like watching you both. It's like a part of me _did_ die, and I can watch down on you from ... Elsewhere. Keep you safe."

The sweet simplicity of Ann's words breaks something fragile inside me, and that night as we slept, in separate beds, because Ann is Ann, I thought only of her.


	5. Hiding

**This one's a bit Sapphic. Just a warning. **

**Disclaimer: Guess who I am? Yes, right, NOT Libba Bray.**

Time is not steady. Days will past like mere minutes, a gale of laughter and sunshine and clear, sweet spring thought gone, fading into the shadowy recesses of the human mind. And other times, minutes, hours can stretch interminably, seemingly without end or relief.

Thus was the following.

Now we have returned to the realms and all is well, we cannot bear the itchy, cloying feeling of the real world. We long to luxuriate in the idea of us controlling time, not the other way around. We will wither seconds, grey the hairs of minutes, daub liver spots on hours and force whole days to walk with a cane.

It pleases us, knowing we are beautifully invincible and painfully vulnerable at the same time. It keeps us feeling real.

Ann has a singing lesson specially booked for her this afternoon. It surprises both myself and Felicity – that Mr Grunewald would be willing to put the hours into training a future governess, and that Ann would have the gumption to ask for it. We exchange seductive glances, each knowing what we want to do with the time she is gone.

Please. Let me explain something. Whilst Kartik is raw and rough and hard, Felicity is exquisite, perfectly formed, soft and smooth. Her skin melts like butter underneath my fingertips, and I cannot resist her. I do not want to resist her.

We steal away to the forest, swinging carefree glances over our shoulders, back towards the solid, yearning silhouette of the school and the watery spaces that make up its inhabitants. We are alive and it is something that drives us. That separates us from the others.

We are alive. Pippa is dead. And they are something in between that is a thousand times worse than either.

When we reach the seclusion of the wood, Felicity does not waver. She is almost violent as she pushes me against a moss-covered oak and bites into my neck. I yelp, feel her tongue flicker against the pulsing blood rushing past. Her fingers dance amongst my corset strings, pulling them tighter. The air is pushed from my lungs and I find myself with a peculiar sense of arousal.

She tugs my uniform from my frame, hangs it coquettishly over a branch and kisses me, once, sweetly, softly, on the lips. We are the same height, a perfect fit for each other. Her tongue slips past my lips and trembles upon my own. I feel the tears she is controlling, pushing back, and I kiss her, passionately, violently, to take her mind off it. To take my mind off it. Her dainty white hand cradles me face lovingly, her fingertips aching to take in the expanse of smooth white flesh all at once. Her hand falls, down my neck, the alabaster white curves of my breasts. Fingertips undulate, teasing and smooth, over the sensitive flesh. I moan, and she smiles into our kiss.

"Gemma Doyle, you little whore."

"Felicity Worthington, you Sapphic harlot."

We giggle, our eyes locked, our kiss playful. Her grey gaze clouds with something dangerous and sharp. It feels like desire.

"Do with me as you will." I murmur huskily into the spirals of her hair. My eyes flicker to a corner of movement, and there he is. Resplendent in a dusty cotton shirt and loose, gypsy trousers. Gazing at me – solely at me – with something I cannot decipher written in his eyes.

I am not sure if it is hurt or lust.

But it is Kartik.


	6. Breathing

* * *

He stands watching us for the longest time, his eyes twisted into mine. I stop the movement of my hands, stop the kisses of my lips and just gaze at him as Felicity arches her neck and begins biting at my flickering pulse. There is something in his manner, his way of standing, of being, that has changed. That I have changed. My chest rises and falls with the tension of arousal. But still, my eyes are intertwined with his. I cannot drag them away.

Felicity does not take long to notice that my attention is thoroughly elsewhere. She glances towards my face, a question half formed on her lips, but then follows my gaze and looks back over her shoulder. She sees him.

* * *

There are little times, quiet times, that changed the paths of everyone and everything the world over. There are sometimes when an idea, a feeling, a mere thought, can bring about the greatest medley of life and destruction ever known. There are other times, achingly empty times, when the right words are not said and the silence is too deep to cross.

This is one of those times.

* * *

Felicity holds the spell between us for the longest time. When she looks away, makes her choice, stay or run, then it will be broken and I know that I will never see him again. She is china-white and deadly, and I wonder whether she really does love me, or whether this will rip our gossamer beauty asunder. But she must choose, she must do something. Mustn't she? Is there any way that we three could stay here, caught in this perfect triangle of hope and trust and lust and hate forever?

Felicity is as still as the lake. His eyes flicker to hers and I can see the slight waver of his neck, how his breath falters in shock. There is pure poison seeping out of those empty grey eyes. She hates him. She actually hates him, and I do not understand why. Because he loves me? Because I love him? Because if I had to choose, I wouldn't choose Felicity? Would I?

And then he is gone, and it feels like everyone I love is determined to break just a little piece of me until all that will be left is a little pile of fractured porcelain. And then they will be happy.

His movement, his active choice to leave me, is enough to break the spell. Felicity watches him depart, her cool eyes betraying no emotion. I wonder if Felicity can ever really feel.

I watch as his shirt flickers and fades out of view, and that is enough to know that whatever I do, I cannot let him out of my sight, because if I do, he will never come back and I will never be able to find him. I do not know why he stays here. Is it for me? Love? Protection? Morbid fascination?

He will stay here no longer, and I must find him.

I wrench myself out of Felicity's grasp, fly on winged fleet after his retreating form. He hears me coming, turns towards me and away again. He is making thousands of choices every single moment, and none of them are me.

"Kartik, please, wait!"

He does not hear, or does not care, or cannot know the terror rising in my throat. I feel as though I should faint with the pressure, a bubble trapped inside me that is slowing expanding, filing up every empty space, pushing my heart deeper and deeper down into my body. I feel twisted, warped. I cannot catch my breath. I can barely whisper his name, and of course he is far too far away to hear me. I see rather than feel myself collapse, my fragile frame shattering amongst the dead winter leaves. I am almost retching, pushing myself up desperately, falling down harder each time. The strength leaves my body. I cannot breathe. I am completely open. The corset strings around my chest are excruciatingly tight, but my fingers feel clumsy and slow. I rip at the laces to no avail. Oh god, I need to breathe, I need air, I cannot, I cannot –

Vision blurs. Fingertips soften. Head is cradled in the cool flat palms of dry leaves. Sleep is bewitching. How easy it would be to slip away into nothingness, just calm clear black that protects me softly from anything that could ever cause hurt. Kartik. Felicity. Pippa. Ann. They all just fade away. There are no tears, no fear or anger. There is nothing but me and my thoughts. Empty. Hollow.

"Gemma! Gemma! Oh, God, what's happened?"" The voice is far away and distorted, as though I am listening from the bottom of the lake. It is terrified, panicky, I can tell from the desperation that builds at the end of each sentence. I must stop this, stop the fear. I ma alright. Really. If only I could open my eyes. I will be juts fine. Just let me slip away into the empty space that surrounds me and everything will right itself. Things will move and expand and fill the space that used to be mine. If only I could open my eyes.

With tremendous effort, I pull myself from the brink of that insanity and my eyes snap open, my breathing fast and erratic.

There is no one. There is no screaming voice, no panicked eyes, no Felicity. She has left the forest and gone back up to the school without me, furious that I chose to leave rather than stay. She will not speak to me for a very long time, perhaps even hate me. I find that I am struggling to connect these thoughts with any feelings. Kartik has gone.

I struggle into a sitting position, pull my knees up and hug them against my shivering body. I am just in my corset and chemise. I am freezing, my skin adopting a blue hue that makes me look freshly dead. I think of Pippa.

I am pulled back from my ghoulish wanderings by the feel of eyes on my skin. I glance about me, quickly, terror rising in my throat. I am alone in deep woods, almost naked. I am vulnerable and weak, the effects of the vision still taking their toll.

"Who's there? Show yourself!" My voice echoes feebly through the wintry trees. The eyes do not flicker. They are burning holes in my skin, searing through my corset and chemise. I am here, fiery and naked, before their eyes, and I do not know who it is.

I stand, my legs lurching under my body as though I were a newborn lamb. I clutch a low hanging branch for support, slump the weight of my body against the solidity of a trunk. My breathing quickens again, but this time it is purely dread. I am being watched.

"Kartik?"

I know it is not him. His eyes were never this angry, surely? But perhaps my casual infidelity has rendered him murderous.

There is movement in the foliage to the left of me. I flinch, then gasp as he appears. His curls glitter dangerously. His eyes are hard and stopped. My uniform is clutched in his hand.

"Kartik, please, help me-"

He does not speak, will not speak. I reach out an unsteady hand towards him; croak a plea for him to loosen the laces on my corset. He does not waver. Throwing the muddy uniform at my feet, he is almost atop me next second. He grasps my hips – and I used to revel in the safety of those fingertips - and twists me roughly. My face is pressed painfully close to the humid bark, the peaty, rich smell of earth filling my nostrils. He presses his weight against me, his fingers nimbly loosening the strings of my corset just so, and then retying them. He has done this so many times.

The air enters my lungs immediately, catching me off guard. I stumble and slip against the rough bark, slicing through the delicate flesh that shields my cheekbone. I look at him, wide eyed, over my shoulder, the pain flooding through my face. Blood drips into my cupped hand. He gazes at me for the longest time, and there is something that is not quite sadness and not quite hatred in his eyes. It makes me feel achingly empty.

And then he is gone.


	7. Losing

There are some days that mean nothing, which will simply be absorbed into the misty realms of time. There are others that you remember for their sunshine, their laughter and light. And there are still others that you long to forget, and never truly will.

He disappears through the trees. I try to call out to him, but the air is flooding my lungs and I can hardly stand. The blood drips to the forgiving forest floor, leaving a sinister tear track. I sniff, desperate to stop real rears intermingling. He is almost out of sight.

"Kartik, wait, please!" My voice is barely more than a whisper, but I know that he can hear me. He stops. The muscles are clenched tight across his back, like canvas stretched taut across its wooden frame. Anger. It terrifies me.

"Kartik, please. Please."

He walks back up to me, quicker than I expected, and the force of his nature overwhelms me. He stands close, too close; I can barely see his face.

"You should get dressed. You don't want to wander these woods looking like that."

"I ... I know."

He sniffs, looks away. It is his turn to speak, but I suppose he has nothing more to say to me. And what can I say to him? I love you? I'm sorry? Please don't leave me, please not you too? I wonder how I would feel if I found him with another. Obviously not with a man, that doesn't exist, but with another girl. Perhaps one from the school. How the burning black pain would shoot through my lungs as he stood, gazing at me whilst another girl touched his skin and ran her slender fingers through his hair.

"Oh, God, Kartik, I'm ... I can't ... when I'm with Felicity, I can pretend I'm someone I'm not. Someone bohemian and exciting and wild."

"What, coitus with a gypsy isn't enough for you? Isn't forbidden enough?"

I do not know what the word means, but I can imagine what he is alluding to, and the blush in my cheeks is more than enough for an answer.

"See? You can't even have an adult discussion about it, Gemma! And you think you're capable of handling ... illegal relations like that?"

He said illegal. Not unnatural. Not degenerate. Illegal. I wonder, would we be hanged for it? Mocked in the streets for it?

"It seems the only people I fall in love with are the only people I am not allowed to love." The words come out far sadder and less bitter than I mean them to. Kartik moves his hand towards me, and I think he is going to cup my face and kiss me like he used to, but all he does is smear my running blood roughly across my porcelain cheek with his thumb. The pressure stings, and I yelp. There is blood at the corner of my mouth, coppery hot. The distain in his eyes as he looks at me softens and wavers for a moment, but soon it is back, solid and relentless.

"Kartik. I loved you."

That soft 'd' is all it takes to break him. I see the wound I have made flash across his eyes, but before I can gloat in this injury I have inflicted, he is sneering at me coldly.

"Gemma, you are nothing more than delusional. Dangerous. And when you leave this school, leave Spence and all of your silly little school chums behind, when you make your debut and be courted by countless dreary young men in top hats and tails, and when you become engaged, and then married. Do you not think they will _know_? Be able to _tell_? I've breached you, Gemma. You begged me to and so I did. In their eyes, you'll be nothing more than a whore."

The word is like a slap. I blink, step back a little, desperate to stop the tears pooling in my eyes.

"That's not true."

"Why not?"

"I did not ... I did not accept _money_ from you."

He laughs then, a throaty, husky, beautiful laugh, and it unnerves me.

"Gemma. If you must know, I'm disgusted with myself. I've ruined you, and for what? We can never be together! You understand that, yes?"

"We could, Kartik! I could give everything up, leave my family and forego my inheritance. I could join the gypsy camp and _then_ we could be together."

"Gemma." This time, his words are not meant to sting. "Gemma, you will never be that brave."

* * *

Felicity is nowhere to be found as I return to the school. It feels as though I have been gone for years. When I was here last, I had Kartik. I had Felicity. I was in love, and loved in return. I did not think myself a whore. When I was here last, I thought that Kartik and I would end up together, somehow. When I was here last, I did not worry about the future, about honour and shame and scandal. When I was here last, I was planning stealing away to the boathouse tonight and lying with Kartik until the moonlight dappled our skins into different kinds of creatures.

Now it seems all I have left is Ann.

I wander towards the music rooms, hear dull, plodding scales and wavering childish voices spill out from under the heavy wooden doors. I miss Ann. She has been the most constant figure in my new life, and yet consistency never wins any prizes. I feel for her, being forced to watch Felicity and I blossom and bloom and half fall in love whilst she must stay behind and learn how to darn.

A flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye distracts me. Three girls are dancing. Glossy curls, blonde waves, mousy brown frizz slips and slides over each other. It is like watching past versions of my friends. Now one is dead, one is cold and one is quiet.

* * *

The world would only be so different for you if you were not in it. If you have never existed, then there is nothing to miss, nothing to yearn for. Spaces would be filled differently, yes, but no one would ever seek you out. Is that not terrifying?

* * *

I cannot find Ann and do not want to find Felicity. I stumble awkwardly up to our bedroom, secretly hoping to find Ann and not have to bear the burden of my solitude alone. But of course, she is not there. I wander towards the window, hold back the light silk of the drapes. The lawn is a verdant green, softly sloping down towards the forest. Little clouds of white dot the grass, wriggling and dancing and skipping amongst each other. It feels like I am watching the skies from a much more impressive height.

I relax back onto my bed, feel the tension eke out from my muscles, the spaces between my bones, and I finally allow myself to do what I need to, and cry.


	8. Dreaming

**Disclaiming... disclaiming ...**

Moonlight slips like treacle through the pane of glass. I cannot sleep.

I feel the hum of Felicity's rage crackling on my skin. Yes, she is awake, and so am I. I could easily tiptoe down the corridor and round the corner and perhaps knock quietly on her door and she would open it and there would be a pause as we looked into each other's eyes and saw the fear and loneliness and desperation slowly drowning us both. I could talk without a pause for breath and that would keep the pain away.

Last night, I cried. Not just for myself, for Felicity and Kartik, for Ann, Pippa, mother, father. Tom. I cried for this whole fractured world, for the pressure of disapproval slowly crushing us and moulding us into flat, placid smiles of girls who'll take their tea with two sugars and an awful lot of milk. I cried for the scars that cross Ann's wrists, for the calluses on the hands of the gypsies. I cried for the wide, empty eyed stares of the street urchins we draw the curtains to. I cry for the huddle of woman sewing under gaslight to feed their family, already too dead to care. I cry for the sweet plains of India, the herbs and spices that filled their air and used to make me dizzy. I cry for the tugging lurch of homesickness, as I remember watching with awe, no more than a child, a man charm a cobra in a little braid box. I remember watching a monkey do a trick in front of a group of infants, no more than six years old. I remember peeping down a side alley, seeing the girls, some no older than I am now, sitting or standing languidly outside shop fronts, closed drapes. They would call out the lecherous old men sitting opposite, drinking in a dusty group of aching backs and stiff, worked fingers. They seemed so friendly, I remember pointing them out to my mother. And she did not hurry me away as a proper English lady should. She did not close my eyes to the horror or poverty and despair. She gazed down the alleyway with such aching sadness in her eyes, looking at each girl as if she were a lost daughter, something to pity and love. She bade Sarita and I wait at the corner, strode down the street with those forceful steps of hers. She was jeered but did not respond, and entered the house as though she knew it inside out. It took five minutes, no longer, but she appeared once more, an older woman with a harsh painted face and garish gold jewellery in tow. Mother walked back up the alley towards us just as this woman muttered something to the gaggle of girls on the steps. They followed her inside and shut the door.

I remember. Mother would not tell me what she had done, but she told Sarita, and I overheard. Eavesdropped, if you will. Mother had paid the old lady enough to 'cover the days takings'. It meant nothing to me, and I discarded it.

I have always been such a fool.

Yes. I took my tea and ate my dinner and excused myself with a headache soon after. I removed my dress and layers of petticoats and found that I could not untie my corset on my own. So I slid into bed and pretended to dream of nothing but light.

Now, the moonlight is slicing. It slices through everything, leaving only the bleached bones and desiccated hopes of all us good little girls.

I could do so many things. Yes, I could go to Felicity. I could wake up Ann. I could stumble down to the gypsy camp and beg Kartik to talk to me, to look at me. I could travel to the realms, all on my own, and sit and dream of Pippa. Of choice, both good and bad.

I do none of these.

The moonlight is fresh and dewy on my back as I tangle down the vines. The spindly leaves catch and tear on my chemise. I cannot go through life without causing just a tiny bit of destruction. It makes me smile.

* * *

When a bone is broken and sets wrongly, you must break it anew to truly heal it. When something so fractured as _us_ has been that way for so long, you must break us all again to set us right. To create, you must destruct.

* * *

The grass is soft and cool under the arches of my soles. I feel the deliciously dirty mud oozing its way into the crevices of my toes. This is not what I am supposed to be doing. I am supposed to be tucked up tight in starched white blankets, drifting through sleep as easily as I should drift through the waking hours. I should not be stealing away to the lakeside, determined to feel the silk of depths under my feet and sweep with splayed fingertips through the soft protection that surrounds me. I long to swim naked, and perhaps even drown. To be truly free in my skin, float inside it in a soft membrane that will protect me always. Protect me from hurt, from the danger of lust, from conflicting feelings and how having too much love can be as deadly as having to much hate.

I cannot undo my corset. I cannot unravel the cords that bind me, mould me and shape me and break me into the perfect figure of a wife, a high society lady, with high sights and high hopes and high snobbery. I detest them all.

Falling against a wizened, wise old tree, I sob in frustration, my fingers becoming more frantic and less nimble as I tug at the laces. Again, it is as though I cannot breathe. Why is it that now the visions are coming fast and thick, and I cannot control them? I used to understand, I used to be able to bend them to my will. Now I seem to be nothing more than a ragdoll that ye gods delight in shaking.

Collapse to the ground. Feel the dry scratch of leaves against the softness of my cheek, the sting of that recent slash. It was not noticed at dinner. I don't think we are ever truly noticed, and maybe that is what makes some of us so very unbearable. Desperate for some feelings, even if they have to resort to hate. Like Ann said, slipping away inside yourself is dangerously easy. Learning not to feel comes second nature. After all, we are English.

The laces do not give, and I cannot easily soak my corset and chemise, weaken the boning that may bend and buckle as my lungs struggle for breath. Imagine the horror of lungs expanding. Go on. How ghastly. How... unnatural.

I sink to the earth, trying desperately to dig myself into the forgiving comfort of soil, dark and deep and peaty. Rich. I could bloom each spring as the softest of daisies, delicate stems of slender grass. All who loved me could come and sit and be with me, feel the brush of my fingertips as they stroked their hands through the life that surrounded them.

Insanity is so much easier to embrace when you are lonely. When you have nothing.

Tonight, there are no eyes watching me. Tonight, no one cares enough about a silly little schoolgirl to come and sit with her, loosen to cords that bind her, stroke her face and braid her hair and whisper that everything will be alright. Some kind of alright. I cup my face in my hands and rock gently on my heels. It is overwhelming, this desperation, and now I see how mothers will murder to feed their children, fathers will slit the throats of defenceless maidens just to get at the jewels of their rings or the coins of their purse. Children are always the cruellest. It in unbearable, sometimes, remembering my childhood and how selfish, how arrogant and precocious and spiteful I could be. We are meant to protect children from harm, but no one considers protecting children from children.

The breeze is colder on my skin here than by my window. How tragic, and yet how beautifully telling. Nothing is ever quite as good as you imagine it to be. Nothing. Nothing is pure and good and true, nothing will withstand the greatest, deepest, darkest sins.

_Thou shalt not kill._

_That shalt not steal._

_Thou shalt not commit adultery._

Thou shalt not disobey the word of God because no one will know what to do if you do. No one will be able to control you. They will condemn you, discard you, perhaps even hate you, but they will not control you. Yes. I know what I'm saying. Please do not patronise me.

I stretch out, breathe out, relax. I extend my fingers and my toes to breaking point. I feel every particle of me joined together in solemn unity. I will be my own battalion.

And then it comes, as before, slowly, deadly, creeping oh so quietly. I have not the strength to resist. If I let it pull me under, would the pain be less intense? Would the pressure flicker and fade? Would I be able to breathe? Would I be able to die?

I feel myself falling through my body, slipping out of my empty skin and flying towards the gypsy camp. Kartik is not around the fire. I wander amongst them, wave my palms in front of their blank faces, whisper secrets into their ears. I dance in front of them. Nothing. I hesitate, then raise the hem of my chemise to an indecent height. Nothing.

This vision is different. I am outside, separate, I suppose half dead, but I am controlling it. I did not resist it, and I am controlling it.

I approach his tent. He is sleeping; I can sense the essence of dreams on the air. I reach out my hand to push the material back, but it swipes through the fabric. I walk through it instead, and there is a wonderful moment, a split second, where I an encased in worn, warm canvas.

And there he is, sleeping not soundly. His forehead furrows and puckers, and he murmurs indistinguishable words into the empty night around him. I strain desperately to hear my name. He does not utter it. It hurts more than it should. We are not in control of our dreams. He may be thinking of me every waking hour, desperately sorry for leaving me alone in the woods, desperately sorry for his cruel words and crueller actions. We cannot control our dreams, I know that, and yet every night as I dream, I dream only of him.

**heyyyyyy ... am on a total spurt (ooer) at the moment. As always, reviews make me smile. They actually do. I'm adopting a policy of replying to all of my reviews for all of mon oeuvres (that MIGHT mean eggs, it's not supposed to) as of ... NOW. Tara pets.**


	9. Sparring

It is when I am returning to the school, trying not to notice the tears pooling in my eyes and stumbling like lost little children down my cheeks, when the vision hits. Oh, and what force, what intensity, what strength. I try to resist, instinctively, and then remember my newfound knowledge and relax, floating desperately along the stream, but it is not enough. The vision is buffeting me about. Breathing is not an option. I stagger against a tree, hoping in vain to be able to get close enough to the school to scream for help. Yes. I wasn't thinking straight. Of course I wasn't thinking straight.

It was as though a hand had covered my mouth, my eyes, my ears, even the delicate curves of my nostrils, for suddenly the pressure is gone, and I am floating, suspended somewhere in times where there is no sound or sight or smell or taste. I cannot speak, but this does not matter, for who in the world is there to speak to?

My limbs are weightless and yet heavy. I cannot move them. And then it comes. Strangely bubbling, how I would imagine a pan sounds when it boils over. A clamouring, desperate rabble that rises and rises in volume until I can barely think. They scream and moan and sob my name – "Gemma, Gemma, help us, please," -, intermingled with the low, hoarse rattle of the injured and wail of the bereaved. So much sadness, terror, anger, despair, desperation. I am drowning in the Pandora's box of humanity. I cannot see them, cannot move, cannot feel them clinging like dirt to the end of my fingertips. All I can do is listen to their terrible pain and pray that this kills me quickly, for I cannot bear it any longer.

And then something clutches my hand and says – just _says_, no shouting or crying or swearing, simply _says_ – "No." and I am back.

A worried gypsy stands over me. In his hand are a couple of dead rabbits, hanging limp and thin from his fingernails. His thick, dark eyebrows are foreign, speckled eyes betray his concern. He takes in my appearance swiftly, my muddied chemise, straining corset and wild eyes, and utters something in a thick, clumsy language that I cannot understand. Shaking his head, he stands, and then pronounces each English word as if it pains him.

"You are of the having fits?"

"Y-yes."

"You are friend of Felicity? Felicity speaks often of her friend with fits."

Pippa. Felicity has a gypsy, as do I, and she speaks with him of Pippa.

"I'm so sorry. I merely couldn't breathe up at the school, my room is terribly stuffy, and so I thought I would come down to the lake and try to ... cool myself."

I speak too fast for his simple grasp of the language. He frowns and shakes his head.

"I was very hot in school. The lake is cold. I came to swim."

"Ah. Water. Where are your clothes?"

His worried, puckered forehead and blunt question makes me smile.

"Up at the school. I was too hot. But I cannot remove my corset – my corset", and here I gesture to the hateful garment, "Because it is too tight."

He misunderstands, goes round to my back and begins plucking ineffectually at the laces. I gasp and jump away, my cheeking flushing crimson. Under the soft protection of night, they are secret. He simply frowns – again – and begins to talk in Romanian, as if to reassure himself that he is not the mad one. I try to smile, murmur, "I am alright", when he bellows "Kartik!" into the undergrowth. Jesus _Christ_.

"No, no!" I stammer, aware that the gypsy camp is all too near and there is no way the shout would not have woken him. The lungs on this man are quite something.

"I leave you with Kartik. He speak good English. Not me. I am just poacher. Sorry."

I have to thank him, even though at present I want to do no more than rip his silly frowning head from his shoulders. I am desperate for him to retreat, so I can slip off out of the forest and not have to confront Kartik. But he seems determined to wait with me until Kartik arrives. We are not brought up to expect such gentlemanly behaviour from gypsies, and it throws me. He settles himself on a tree stump, glancing over at me all too often. His gaze is soft and golden, gentle and unassuming. Certainly not the type I would have expected Felicity to toy with, but perhaps she revels in the gentle safety of his quiet hands.

It was not his voice that dragged me back from the multitudes. _That_ voice was young and sweet, and the hand soft and small. I do not have time to ponder this new mystery. I do not have the energy.

Kartik can be seen through the trees. I tense, holding my breath instinctively. This will, undoubtedly be awkward. He will be cutting and calm, anger controlled so well. Too well. He will gaze at me with distaste; mutter something sounding polite but meant to hurt.

Emerging from the foliage, he is rumpled and bleary, his shirt creased and his curls sleepy. He blinks a couple of times, squints, opens his eyes wide and allows the surprise and the ... the 'something else' to flood them fully, and then he closes them, and when he reopens them, they are blank and flat.

"What is it, Ithal?"

He can see perfectly well what it is. It is _me_. But Ithal mutters to him in a low voice, shooting worried looks in my direction. Kartik nods, places a hand on Ithal's shoulder and thanks him, and the gypsy fades away into the events of this absolutely ridiculous night.

"Well, Miss Doyle, you certainly know how to cause a scene."

"Terribly sorry to have disturbed you, sir."

"_Sir_?" he smirks in disbelief. "Come now, Miss Doyle, you never show respect. Don't indulge _me_."

The words sting tears into the backs of my eyes, but I will not blink. "Believe me, I wouldn't."

"Tut-tut, Miss Doyle. Remember: grace, charm and beauty." He singsongs the motto in a posh, society voice. He is mocking me. I am itching to swear at him, curse and let fly with insults, but he would revel in my misbehaviour and taunt me till I wept tears of blood. I-can-not-win. None of us can. We are _women_.

"That cut is looking ... vivid." He pronounces the word with great relish, and I hate him.

"Yes. Unfortunately some _bloody_ idiot earlier handled it quite roughly, and now it shall probably scar, which will be delightful. Of course, as to be expected with such a hideous facial disfigurement, I shall never marry, and end up an old spinster. With cats."

He laughs out loud into the night then, and I am flooded with affection for the way his eyes soften and glitter and the smooth curve of his full lips. He really is astonishingly beautiful.

"Schoolgirls can be so melodramatic." This is more crude, vulgar and obvious a jibe. It hurts just as much, and I am filed with the longing, the intense desire to cause pain. As much as I can. Pure pain and hatred.

"Yes. Well, it is rather past my schoolgirl bedtime, and I do have a responsibility for my schoolgirl studies tomorrow, so I must be schoolgirling off now."

He smiles again, and reaches for my hand. I am transfixed. Is he going to apologise? Beg forgiveness? Mercy?

No. He takes my hand, drops to his knee in a parody of a bow, and kisses the thin skin that stretches across my light bones. The warmth of his lips lingers. It is all I can do not to burst into tears.

"Goodnight, Miss Doyle." He does not watch for me to depart, but instead turns and heads off into the darkness.

He would not even speak my name.


	10. Speaking

**

* * *

**

Disclaimer: Yeah. I'm not Libba Bray.

**I can't be bothered to come up with a witty, intelligent disclaimer. **

**Also, I use a rooooood word here – I actually did my research too. Apparently, the word fk originated in the 1800's and was the acronym for For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. It was to do with prostitutes or something. So, the word would have existed, and Gemma would never have heard of it but Kartik is clearly a wise one. Like the kids that know the meaning of the word 'condom' before anyone else. Ahahaha ... mental picture of Kartik looking at a condom with a quizzical expression on his face ... oh dear.**

**To prevent any legal battles, I am IN NO WAY insinuating here that Kartik ... frequented brothels. It's clearly not true. Clearly.**

**Clearly?**

**Ahem. Anyway.**

Sometimes, you will find yourself balancing precariously between two lives, lives you might have had. You can choose: which abyss will you fall into? This one, or the other?

I choose the other.

* * *

I race after him, thistles and thorns puncturing the silk of my soles, and I do not care. All I need is for him to love me once more, forgive me my failings and tell me that he will live with me. That he _can_ live with me.

"Kartik, please. I know I've said this so much over the past day, but please."

He turns, and his eyes are a condescending mix of sadness and pity. "Please what, Miss Doyle? Listen to you, forgive you, kiss you, _fk_ you?"

The word is foreign, and tastes strange on my tongue as I mouth it in the darkness. I have no idea what it could mean. Fk. To pity? To love? I really have no idea, and the smirk on his face shows that he knows of my ignorance.

"Don't worry, Miss Doyle, I would be disgusted if you knew the meaning of it."

"What ... what _does_ it mean?"

He laughs, a smoky, husky thing that disappears into the cold of the woods. "No, Miss Doyle. Now, what was it you wanted?"

"I'm ... Kartik, I'm trying to apologise!"

"Absolutely. Are you done yet?"

"Kartik, please." And here I decided to slip out of my skin once more, but in a different way, a dangerous way. Tell him something that I am not sure is truth. Whisper it to him anyway and hope for the best. "Kartik, I know that you love me. _I know_ that you love me. You cannot tell me otherwise. You can call me arrogant and childish and a silly little schoolgirl all you want, but I know that the way ... the way you touched me is ..._was_ ... real."

"Miss Doyle, you are embarrassing yourself."

"No, I'm embarrassing _you_, Kartik. I'm telling you things that you could not even admit to yourself. And they are true. They. Are. True."

"No, Miss Doyle, they. Are. Not."

"Kartik, my name is _Gemma_!"

He looks at me for the longest time, and when he speaks, his voice is soft. "Not to me, it isn't."

It sends, not a spear, but a shock, a frisson of electric heat, through me. It ... it almost cripples me. _Offends_ me. Does he really think that little of me? Really think that _I_ think that little of _him_?

"Yes, to you, it is. I only want to be your Gemma. To have you ... to have you ..." To have him what, I do not know, cannot form on the end of my tongue, but it seems as if my half sentence is already enough and too much for him. He lets out a humourless laugh, a bark that echoes into the night sky and chills me.

"Yes, exactly. You want to _have_ me. Own me. You and that Worthington girl. You don't see us as equals, and that's because we're not. Not in your eyes. You want me to follow you around like a lovesick puppy and pledge my life for yours. You want me to love you whatever your failings."

There is silence, and then there is speech.

"Can't you?"

"Miss Doyle," And he takes my hand, but I rip it from his grasp, "Miss _Doyle_-"

"It's _Gemma_! It's bloody _Gemma_, and you're just doing this to hurt me!"

His voice grows hard and cold. "Do you _ever_ think of _anyone_ but yourself, _Miss. Doyle_?"

"I _hate_ you. There. That's thinking of someone else. I _hate_ you." My voice is young and wavering, the tears turning my words clumsy yet delicate. Childlike. I am nothing more than a child.

"All right. All right, Miss Doyle. Now, dawn is almost upon us, and it would do horrors for your reputation if you were to be caught outdoors, half _naked_, in the middle of the woods with a gypsy. In the night."

"I care little about my reputation."

"But I do, Miss Doyle." he is silent and then speaks, and his words break a little part of me. "If I cannot be with you, I am going to make sure that someone is. I know what loneliness is, Miss Doyle, and I would not wish it even upon you."

"What is _that_ supposed to mean?" _Not even upon me? _How dare he?

"Miss Doyle, do you really see a future? Really see us ever being together, happily?"

"Yes, of course. It's all I want."

"We would be penniless, exiled from all society. We would both have to work, we would never see each other, and if we were to have children, they would be frowned upon by everyone. We would be too Indian for England and too English for India. Do you understand? There is no place on the earth we could be."

"With the gypsies? What about them, or are you just conveniently forgetting that they have wordlessly accepted our relationship as easily as if I were ... were truly one of them."

"There is no 'truly' about it, Miss Doyle. Could you be happy, living most of your life near the school that you once attended, watching through branches as your old headmistress warned the younger girls about the danger of approaching the gypsies? As she told them the chilling tale of a girl, deluded by her fantasies, who ran off with a _heathen_? Even if you could stand that, I would not do it to the others. They would be targeted and victimised, and they are ... they are my family, Miss Doyle. Not my mother and my father, but family nonetheless."

"Kartik... we could go somewhere. There would be somewhere that would have us. Paris! It's a very bohemian city, according to Felicity."

"Yes, bohemian in that you can paint as much as you like there, and perhaps bohemian in that women under the influence of alcohol may become a little friendlier than usual and no one will inform the queen. Not bohemian enough for us. We are not bohemian. We are simply forbidden."

"That's not true." I say fiercely, but the dull tears of hateful truth slip down my face anyway. The salt in them makes the fresh wound sting and I hiss in pain. Kartik jumps.

"What is it, Miss Doyle?"

"The cut ... it hurts."

"Has it been cleaned at all?"

"Not really..." I bite my lip. Yes, the truth is that I haven't cleaned it, but if I tell him that, he will mock me and ridicule me for being so stupid.

"What does that mean?"

"No."

He hisses in exasperation through his teeth and inclines his head in the direction of the gypsy camp. "Come on, it could get infected."

"I'm quite alright, sir, really."

"Gemma, drop the sir. It's unbearable."

He called me Gemma, and it makes me smile. There is hope.


	11. Cleansing

I will not go with him

I will not go with him. It sounds stupid, but I did not want to approach that camp, with the people so close and so bright but in a different world. I could reach out and touch them but not really feel them. Kartik grows impatient, but I think I sense a flicker of guilt and ... and fear, I suppose, at what he has done to me. What he is capable of doing to me.

"Why will you not just heal it with your magic?"

Because I want you to clean it. I want you to touch it and make the flesh smooth again. I want your fingertips on my skin and your whisper in my ear telling me you love me. I want to see your face serious and working, the studious intensity of your gaze.

"It makes me very tired."

"Funny. I would have thought getting up in the middle of the night and proceeding to cause such disturbance would make you tired also, but I digress." The wicked smile is back: not fully, but I see its ghost playing with his lips.

I try to smile, but it is twisted with tears. He sighs, shakes his head and departs, returning soon with a piece of muslin and some water in an earthenware dish. The moon is almost full, a badly drawn circle of waxy yellow. It lights us.

He dips the cloth in the water and bites his bottom lip gently as he moves his hand towards me. The fabric is icily cold and I yelp, pulling back and gasping. His face is a mask of concern. "What is it?"

"Nothing, it's just ... freezing." I look down, slightly embarrassed, but he smiles and tilts my chin up gently with his thumb. It is what he used to do when he wanted to kiss me, and I gazed at him, wide-eyed and fearful, preparing myself for the wonderful feeling of heat and forgiveness. But he does not kiss me, not even a little. His voice, disembodied, floats out of the darkness. "I need the light shining on the cut, Miss Doyle."

of course he does. I am a fool to think otherwise. I am a fool to think I can kiss him and then, my lips still warm from his, kiss Felicity, right in front of his eyes, and then flit back to him, back to her, back and forth. The water stings almost as much as his rough touch earlier, and tears spring to my eyes. I try desperately to blink them away, but instead they decided to spill hotly down my cheeks. The flat of a finger rests against the top of my cheekbone and he flinches when he feels the heat seeping into his skin. He removes the fabric and we sit for the longest time in the darkness, the stillness, the sinister peace that surrounds us. Dawn is coming. I feel the world slowly begin to stretch into consciousness, the sky yawning the rosy blush of morning. You cannot hide under this open gaze. This wide blue gaze. The gaze of the gods that do not exist, and the gaze of the girls that do.

"Miss Doyle. I do not mean to make you cry. I am sorry for the way I ... the way I hurt you earlier. I was angry."

"I understand."

"No, you don't. I don't think you can, Gemma, because you haven't ever wandered upon me with another woman."

I laugh bitterly. "You make it sound like you've just been hiding well."

He does not join me in laughter, and the gradual realisation that I may have unwittingly stumbled across the truth freezes me to my very core. Prickly heat spreads through me. I can barely breathe, the air is so sparse.

"Kartik, you're not ... are you?"

"You see? Just imagining it and you look freshly risen."

"But Kartik ... I mean, it was Felicity. A... another girl. You couldn't be with a man. That doesn't exist."

He throws back his head and laughs loudly then. A proper laugh, like he used to. When I used to tell him stories of my childhood, how I 'entertained' father's dinner guests for him one night by dancing, as graceful as an elephant, too near the desserts tray. A proper laugh. But this time, I do not understand.

"What? What, Kartik?"

"You. You're unintentionally hilarious."

"I most certainly am _not_!" Indignation floods through me. He is mocking me, once more. And I hate it. I hate him.

"You're painfully naïve, Gemma. 'That doesn't exist'. It's ... it's sweet."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Of course it exists, Gemma, just like love between man and woman and just like love between-" and here he pauses and looks at me archly, "-woman and woman. Some men find they love only men. But of course, society will not accept that. They will not accept any aspect of the human nature that they find less that pleasant. It's bigotry."

I cannot believe that some men ... kiss men, touch men, fall in love with other men. It is too big and dark a concept for me to accept, and the thought of stumbling upon Kartik kissing another man is just too ridiculous. I burst out laughing.

He does not ask me what is so amusing, but gazes at me with his mouth closed and his head slightly titled in a way that makes me feel as though my cut is being cleaned by someone who is dead. Gone. Elsewhere. He resumes his work, the water numbing my skin into indifference. The cloth comes away pinky-red. Fresh blood. It is still bleeding. Odd.

Eventually he stops, places the cloth in the casserole dish of water and smiles at me quickly to let me know he is done. My legs have gone weak with sitting so long, and he helps me to my feet. The words are out in a rush before I can stop myself, control my thoughts.

"Kartik, have you forgiven me?"

"Forgiveness is not black and white, Miss Doyle. Not on or off, up or down. It is shades of grey. Anger, sadness, love, lust, trust ... they are all factors."

Lust. Why would he say lust? Did it make him love me more, seeing me kissing Felicity? I am so far from understanding the complex twists and turns of the male mind. It seems a labyrinth of honour and shame and pride and vanity and jealousy. Of uncontrollable rage and uncontrollable desire.

He leans forward and kisses me at the corner of my mouth. A soft kiss, a gentle kiss, a achingly sweet kiss that means so much and is so painfully empty all at the same time. He steps back, puffs out his cheeks and rubs his arms to get the warmth of blood tingling back through his veins.

"Please kiss me again, Kartik."

He will not, and this makes me love him even more.


	12. Mending

There is wariness in his manner. He holds back from me, and it smarts. He does not offer to walk me to the school, to the vines. Not like he used to. He watches me depart. His hands clasped behind his back looking like some baleful imitation of a guardsman. I do not like the feel of his eyes on my back as I depart. _Don't put a foot wrong, Gemma. Don't tilt or stumble on a rock. Look graceful. Like you're in front of the queen already._

The vines scratch at my arms as I swing my way back up. It is tiring work, the small muscles of my arms flexing as I heave my weight further and further up the spindly rope. I clamber elegantly – oh, so elegantly – through the window frame, landing with a _whumph_! on my mattress. Dawn is fast approaching. I wait, watching the sleeping Ann for the moment she wakes and begins watching us. She is sleeping. Deep. Dreamless. Dead. No. That is wrong.

Felicity does not come, and so I go to her.

She is standing by her own window as I peer through the crack of Open. Her nightgown is crumpled from sleep, or lack of. Her hair flows in golden rivulets down her back. They catch the cold morning light and she looks like melting silver. Soft but hard, warm but cold. Love, but hate.

And then she begins to talk.

"...I thought she loved me, Pip. You know, really loved me. Like you loved me. You did, didn't you Pip? Ohhhh, I miss you so much. I want to scream ever time I open my mouth. But ... but you know what scares me more than all of that? All of the aching, the wanting, the cold, silent nights? The fact that it grows less and less each day. I cannot bear the thought of losing this pain, Pip, because it is a part of me and a part of you. The only part of you I have. Memories are nothing, Pip. They mean nothing and fade into the realms of time. Oh, the realms. What-a-bloody-_nightmare_."

Her last sentence, each syllable clear and correct, makes me smile. She swears to herself, talks to the air that surrounds her as if it were inhabited. I do not want to break this peace, but I do.

"Fee..."

She turns, making no effort to hide the tears on her cheeks and the hate in her eyes. "What do you want, Gemma?"

"I want to stand with you and watch the sunrise."

"I want to be alone."

"I don't."

Yes. Yes, it's selfish and I partly hate myself for it, but if Felicity stays trapped inside her lonely kingdom of ice for much longer, I know her heart will freeze. And I couldn't bear that.

"I love you, Fee. You know that. Just as you love Pippa and me. Both of us. Are you going to make me choose? Because I can't, Felicity, I really can't. you both bring me danger and safety in equal measures, but they taste so different. It terrifies me, how much I love you. Im flawed. I know it."

There is a long silence, when Felicity turns back to the window. I can see her misty reflection in the glass. There is a tear running down her left cheek, but she does not react or brush it away, and no more follow.

"We're al flawed, Gemma."

I take her hand and will not let it go.

That night, we travel to the realms once more. we join hands in a circle of flickering candlelight and try desperately to forget our own little nightmare. As we fall through time itself, I think a little thought to myself. _I wonder if that's it now._ Is it over, or will we lose more friends to the Choice? Will we be whittled down until only I remain? I couldn't bear it.

The gardens are beautiful. Of course they are beautiful. They have never been anything _but_ beautiful. It's... flat, somehow, unreal. We cannot be hurt here. But isn't getting hurt what makes us real? Isn't that what we, what Ann and Felicity and I and perhaps thousands others, are terrified of? Not feeling? Not feeling hurt, pain, sadness, humiliation, loneliness? Just ... slipping away inside ourselves and never coming out?

Ann smiles, watery, feebly, but it is a smile, and that is a start. She glances towards a tree and, quick as lightning, the leaves change to bright blue, cornflower blue. We gasp. The intensity of the colour is blinding, and we have to drink it in in small gulps. It is just so beautiful.

"Why is it... why is it so strong?"

Powerful. I do not understand. I think a quiet little thought deep in my mind and suddenly the sky is filled with rose petal, drifting to earth – this earth, our earth – as the softest of rain. Felicity laughs, mesmerised, and twirls slowly round in it. It looks out of place. If there is one thing my Felicity is, it is not soft and rosy and tranquil. It is not safe.

"It's ... it's so much more vibrant! More potent!"

Yes. Scarily so. The magic slips out of us as quickly as we think. It is instinct. We have no time to refine our wants, hopes, desires. They are raw and imperfect. "It's too strong. Why is it so strong?"

"Because your dear Miss Cross crossed. Miss Cross crossed. Miss Cross crossed."

I do not know who is speaking. Ann is terrified, her mousy hair flicking this way and that as she looks over her shoulders and hurries towards me.

"I want to go home, Gemma! Who is that?"

"I ...I don't know, Ann."

Felicity is doing the opposite. She walks away from me, from us, towards the river, brushing aside reeds and long, swaying grass, almost unconsciously. I call out to her but it is as though she has crossed through a sheet of running water that has now turned to glass. She cannot hear me, and she cannot get back.

The thought chills me, and I run towards her, manic, panicked, colliding with her back as she nears the waters edge. There is no sheet of running water, no glass. No barrier. No divide. Felicity does not look around, does not stop or swear or mock my inelegance. It is unnerving.

Ann follows me, but she closes her eyes for a second and she becomes blindingly beautiful, hardly Ann at all. She smiles, twirls, her legs longer and more graceful, her hands white and perfect. She rushes to the waters edge, gazing in, drinking in her reflection. I cannot stand it. I use my power, my curious superiority, to turn her back to Ann. She sees the change in the glassy waters of the river, and she knows it is me. Glancing up, she is terrifying. Her eyes are wide and crazed, her mouth open half way between a sob and a snarl.

"How dare you, Gemma? Give it back! Give it back! Now!"

"No, Ann, stop!"

Felicity crouches down, some five feet in front of me, and reaches out towards the river. The empty ache inside of me is filled, glossy, glassy black depths of poison, of water that will drown us. All of us.

I stagger towards my friend, and then I see her.

She is beautiful. I do not know what she is, but she is beautiful. More beautiful than anyone I have ever seen before. More beautiful, even, than Pippa. It burns something deep inside me. That continuity, that certain knowledge that Pippa was the loveliest thing I was ever going to see, is gone. The bottom has fallen out of my world, and I feel humiliatingly foolish, embarrassed for Pippa, the crudeness of her beauty stark against the softness, the clear superiority, of this ... this girl? This entity.

"Hello," she murmurs, her rosebud lips curling up into a heart-breaking smile, "It is so very lovely to meet you all. I've been waiting."


	13. Finding

We are spellbound.

There is no other way to describe it. Yes, we have all the magic we could ever wish for at out fingertips. We could do anything, _anything_ with this, and yet the exquisiteness of this creature is enough to make Ann stop whining, Felicity stop freezing. She stops me thinking. Pure thoughts.

"Gemma. Ann. Felicity." The last name is said with extra force, somehow, although the voice is just as light and flowing as before. She cocks her curious head and surveys us out of those extraordinary eyes.

I never thought the words would pass my lips, but here they are: Pippa's beauty was coarse. Obviously, she is still far more beautiful than we could ever be, but as we now gaze at the entity in front of us, we are secretly, each one of us, comparing them in our minds. Pippa's nose could sometimes wrinkle in disgust, and it made her look ... less lovely. Her eyes were sometimes coated in malice and vanity that made her look very cruel. I would rather appear as I am, abundant in imperfections, than have the beauty of Pippa, in front of this creature. It would humiliate me.

"What ... who are you?" Felicity's voice is a whisper, a scurry of wind across dry leaves. The creature smiles – oh, that beautiful smile! – and reaches out, plays with a strand of Felicity's silver-gold hair. It terrifies me.

The creature is not human, and yet has human form. Her skin is smooth, fresh and perfect, pistachio green in colour. Her hair falls around her naked torso like seaweed, slippery and somehow iridescent. Eyes of dewy gold, flecked with green, the colour of fresh autumn. Lips, curving around creamy teeth, also shimmering with that half-oily slick that coats her. Green. She is green.

She smiles, once more, and looks at me. It is like staring into the river itself. I find myself drawing closer, and she leans forward and strokes the round of my face, plays with a tendril of loose hair. She twists it around her finger, and it looks like she has been cut, so vivid in the shade against her soft skin. Gaze down into the water that surrounds her. She is naked, completely so. Beautifully so. The curve of her waist, the gently undulation of her hips. The way her feet – and so curious they are – gently flow, slip past one another as she ... swims? Floats? What is it she is actually _doing_? Her fingers pass swiftly over my lips, and I taste them as the cool of her palm gently strays to my neck. They are rich, mossy, deep and delicious. Her eyes flicker languidly to Ann._ Beckon her forward and make her fall in love with you, because you can. You so easily can._

The air smells light and thin as I step back. Felicity is scanning the river, a wild, hopeful smile on her lips. I hate to see her so very captivated. It is vulnerable. Weak.

"Gemma, who is she? What is she? Is she a mermaid? Don't you think it's odd that after all the time we've been here, we've never seen another living being? Do you think it's possible that Pippa sent her? Pippa sent her to look after us? Do you think it could be Pippa reincarnated?"

No. Pippa could never be this beautiful, however hard she tried. No. Pippa is gone, dead and living at the same time. Pippa will not come near us again, and we will not go near her. Yes, sometimes it feels as through the fabric between this world and the next is wearing thin, and sometimes I can hear her sweet young laughter, feel the shift of air as she dances close to me, catches my hand and whispers in my ear of her one true love. No. Pippa is dead and buried. This is not Pippa, nor has she been sent by our friend. Nor is she a mermaid, I am sure of it, because mermaids are ...well, half fish. Are they not?

"Are there others, Felicity?" My voice is raw and jagged. It scares me.

"Not that I can see ... I wonder what she meant when she said she'd been waiting." Felicity's eyes focus on me for the first time, and they seem wanting and scared. Hopeful.

"Felicity, I think we should ... should ... leave, Felicity." The magic of her gaze is wearing thin, and I can see through the veil now, she the way in which she is smiling and laughing with Ann. It's friendly. Sinister.

"You must be joking, Gemma. I'm never leaving. She's just so ... so..."

"Yes, she's beautiful. Yes, we can talk to her, but we have to leave at some point."

"Of course." She is not listening, glancing along and across the river, searching for more slick seaweed heads, petal –soft smiles and shining eyes.

"What is your name?" Ann whispers, and we are all listening.

"What is your name?" She replies, in a singsong voice. She laughs, and we look at each other. Unsure. Scared? Unsure.

"A...Ann. And this is Gemma, and Felicity."

"Ann. Gemma. Felicity. Pippa?"

Felicity swallows, looks at the ground. "Pippa is dead."

"Yes. I know. But do you?"

The question makes no sense to either Felicity or Ann, but I understand it. Pippa is gone. She is dead. Her corpse is slowing rotting to earth in a polished wooden box in unforgiving soil. No. It is not a pretty picture. But it not a picture either. It simply is. Pippa is not coming back. We will not see her again, and that is how it is meant to be. The dead move on, make choices. Ann knows. She knows better than anyone. Yet she doesn't see it. Neither does Felicity. Pippa. Is. Gone.

We say nothing. The silence stings like lemon juice. Her eyes find mine, and she bites her bottom lip. Her teeth flash.

"Gemma. Come and sit with me. Swim with me."

"No, thank you."

"Don't be rude, Gemma." I understand. It was not a question, a suggestion. It was an order.

"No."

"Gemma. Gemma. I understand, better than anyone. I understand, Gemma Doyle. Mary Dowd. Persephone."

These are not my names. I do not know them, and they are not my names.

"You look so much like Mary, dear Gemma. Not so much like Persephone, but then again, those Greeks were only guessing, weren't they?" she laughs, looks to me with a smile on that green face and the tinkle of merriment still hanging in the air.

"Persephone. Mistress of the underworld." Felicity looks towards me, accusingly. As though I gave the name to myself. As though I thought of the meaning, of the goddess behind the name, and decided it would make me powerful.

"Who's Mary?" I ask, ignoring the fiery holes that Felicity is boring into the back of my head.

"A girl you never knew. Worry not, my dear lady."

She is toying with us, all of us. Confusing us. At first, I thought she was seducing Felicity, touching her first, speaking her name with weight, with depth, that did not extend to Ann and I. But then ... they way she stroked my face, touched my skin, dragged those spindly fingers across my blushing lips. And then Ann. And now me, whispering silky words into my ears that I do not understand, but am desperate to fall in love with.

She stops smiling. A cloudy tear rolls down her cheek. It is murky and deep. River water. She is water. She is river.

"I am here to talk to you. All of you. About something very special. I am not meant to warn you, to approach. But I could not help myself. I have been exiled from my home, my tribe. My place in this world for hundreds of years."

"How old are you?" Felicity cannot help herself. Indeed, the girl looks no older than us, taut skin and supple bones.

"Older than you, certainly. Hundreds of years older than you. I have been here so long the river knows my voice. The water that is flowing over me has flowed over me before. Every little particle. Does that not terrify you?"

Yes. It does and it doesn't, at the same time. Ann hangs back, wary at the ambiguity. She is so very wary. Felicity is smiling that ripe smile, but I am sure I can see through it to the other side where question race like killers through the back streets of London. She is struggling. She is trying hard to piece together a question, something witty and certain, something prying. She is trying so very hard. I want to kiss her.

"You asked my name. Ann, yes? You asked my name?" She looks towards the trembling girl, who nods. Does not speak. I see the slight tremor escape her body. It rolls towards me in waves. Do not let it drown you.

"Yes, I can see why you would want to know. After all, I knew your names. I knew all about Pippa. Mary. Evelyn?" She looks to me and smiles, innocent. So far from innocent, and yet I cannot hate her. "Yes, Evelyn, wasn't it? Your sister. Oh, I watched her for so very long. I loved her as one can only love a child. I thought often of speaking to her, with her, but I never did. I don't quite know why." She is pondering, pensive, suddenly a thousand miles and sixteen years away from us. The gulf is black, and it is bleak. It speaks of ignorance and India.

"Yes. I never spoke to her. Well, she never strayed that close to the river. Not after the first time." That tinkling laugh again. It mocks us, and our grief. "Not after the first time, no. But when she was expelled from that water, she never wanted anything to do with it again. Not surprising, really. Not when you think about it."

This creature lived so close to my sister, for all those years. So close, and she thought she was alone. So close. Too close.

"I often thought about leaving the river and going to sit with her. I never did. I did not know what I could offer her, really. What can I do? I cannot dry her tears, look at me! I'm a river, aren't I? Made of water. Water, and dust, and smooth round pebbles. And occasionally little schools of fish. That's all. And I cannot sing, cannot dance, have no musical instrument. I did not think my stories would be of any help. Not to her. Not when she was so very lost already." She gazes round at us, impassively. I do not know why she is telling me this, but I am mesmerised. "I was beginning to wonder whether you'd ever come. Like she said you would. But then you did! And she was so very happy, and I was so very happy for her. But then you were clumsy." She looks me directly in the eye, and I want to look away but don't. "You were clumsy and unforgivable. She had been waiting for sixteen years, and you greet her with the news of her darling mother's death? Tut tut, Gemma. I expected better. The way she whispered about you, I expected a ... a magician. A sorceress. Not a ... what was that phrase he used?" she smiles at me, those milky teeth perfectly spaced and slightly pointed, "Not a 'silly little schoolgirl'."

I will not lie. It was not a dagger through my heart. Not a spear of ice. Not a deep dark cold. Just an electric heat that pulsated through me once, maybe twice, and then died down into something that spat and boiled occasionally.

"How do you know that? How can you say that?"

"Don't think I haven't been listening, Gemma. After all, I can cross the veil between life and death – just watch," and before we could stop her, still her or slap her, she was gone, undulating wildly through the rocky boulders and icy rivulets towards the waterfall. I did not call out "Stop!" I did not want her to. She was listening, all those nights ago, listening as he kissed me and touched me and made me moan. But which night was it? He said the words so very many times.

She slips under the waterfall like parchment under a door. And then there is that high, quivering moment, when you wonder whether any parchment will reappear, whether you will have contact with Beyond The Door that night. Whether your notes of loneliness will be answered, or whether they will lie on the cold dark floorboards all night, a new kind of solitude.

She comes back. Of course she does. Because whatever she is, she cannot die, can double back and live for hundreds of years. She's _green_, for Christ's sake! The woman is _green_.

"See? I told you so. If I can cross between life and death as easily as you can choose between – what was it?" she glances towards Ann, who falls back, mouth slack, "-jam and marmalade, well, then, it stands to reason that I can cross between this world and the next. Does it not?" she gazes round at us, her dewy eyes wide. They are watery, but not in the same way that Ann's are. Yes, water runs down her face constantly, out of those beautiful eyes and into the slippery folds of her hair, but she is not crying. She simply is made of the stuff, it seems. She cannot be crying.

"Does it not?" Oh. She is wanting an answer.

"Yes, of course." Felicity is there, determined to understand, determined to be the one to coax real words, real _things_, out of the creatures mouth.

"Felicity. You are wrong. I _cannot_ cross between this world and the next. Yours. I cannot do that. But I can listen." She darts towards me, whispering on the gentlest breeze there is. The words reach me, and make sense. "I can listen, with my ear to the riverbed, and I can hear everything. Everything. I have heard what he does to you. What she-" she flicks her head towards Felicity, "-does to you. I can hear everything, but see nothing. Oh, but it does not matter, because I first saw you all ... so long ago, it seems like, now, but it cannot be as long as I imagine. Strange, how time plays tricks on you. Especially when you have so much of it." Laugh. Pause. Continue. "I put faces to the words and imagined it all. All apart from him. I had not seen him when he first became a regular occurrence. Had I? You hadn't brought him, not back then. But the night that your Evelyn, and your mother, crossed, I saw him. Clinging to you and not letting go. I tried to focus on his beauty, but all I could feel was that tremendous, tugging agony of loss. You understand, don't you, Gemma? But for me, there was no appeasement, no goodbye embrace or poignant last words. I had nothing. All I had was a touch, a fingertip's worth of her skin. Her warm, glowing, alive and dead _skin_. Interesting, isn't it, how we always think of _our_ grief as the worst?"

I cannot speak. She is deep inside my mind, my memories, opening drawers and shaking out skeletons. Trying them on. She looks so beautiful.

"No. I cannot get to your world. I cannot even imagine it. Tell me, is it so different to this one?"

There is nothing. Felicity will not speak. She has been silenced. I never thought it could be done, but I am not glad. I want my Felicity back, the old Felicity that wrapped me up in the forbidden. Not this new, unsure, fractured Felicity.

"No. It's not. It's very similar. Except without the magic."

"Thank you, Ann. I have waited a long time to know that." She inclines her head. Ann does the same. It looks as though she is mocking her. It is dangerous.

"Anyway ... yes, I got a lot of enjoyment watching you and Evelyn talk. Gemma. I am talking to you. You are listening, aren't you?"

This creature is like a child. She is nothing more than a child. Petulant, almost, desperate for your full attention, desperate to know that there is nothing else in the world but herself. But she has been here for hundreds of years. She must know more than anyone, that there is so much else. So much that is more important than us. We are women.

"Yes, she used to give you all sorts of cryptic messages. Warnings. It was amusing. Well, I laughed, certainly. She told you lies, too, Gemma. Yes, imagine that! Lies from the mouth of your dear sister Evelyn. She told you she sent the locket back, with her last remnants of magic. What lies, Gemma, but they were beautiful lies. She found out, of course she did. Younger than you. She found out that it flowed in her, in her veins. She did not need a precious locket. She sent it back to India in that letter she told you about. That, at least, was truth."

The truth stings. It always has done.

"And she tried to warn you about it, did she not? Don't lay your trust in pretty things, Gemma. But you got it wrong, did you not? You got it so very wrong. So painfully wrong. Mistakes, Gemma. They are all you are built on."

The truth stings. It always has done.


	14. Weaving

Hey –

**Well, I really enjoyed writing the last chapter, especially creating 'her', and I hope you enjoyed reading it. It sounds like an acceptance speech, doesn't it? Well, anyway, I just wanted to write this as a way of thanking everyone who has read and (especially those who) reviewed. Reviews make me levitate with happiness. Yeah. They do. No, really. They do.**

**Disclaimer: Wow ... I haven't disclaimed in while ... maybe I'll get sued. DISCLAIM.**

The silence stretches. Sags. She smiles beatifically the entire time, unaware of our discomfort. Unaware of how unnerving we find it, that privacy is now corruptible. Completely unaware. Or juts good at pretending? Christ knows, she's had long enough.

"Ann. I know how it feels. How painful and desperate and desolate. I know what it is, Ann. When you sleep, I listen to your breathing."

"Felicity, I feel the rage of the ice in your eyes. The injustice, the frustration. The lust that should not be there. When you fall asleep, awake, I am there, listening to the softness of tears hitting pillow. Yes. I am there."

"Gemma. I am with you every step. Every place, everywhere you turn and everything you kiss. I listen to the grate, that electric hum, of needles in your blood. I know what it is."

She turns to each of us, delivering a line, perhaps two, that cripples. She tells the most beautiful stories. She weaves the most wonderful lies. She poisons us with each dripping word, and we are desperate for more. Opium. Laudanum. River-girl.

"You asked my name, Ann. So long ago now. So very long ago. For me, time melts. Stretches out interminably and then snaps, sudden, and swings back around. Sometimes I find myself in the past, and have the frustration of living through life again. I am young, for one of us. I will be here until you die, and longer. But you asked my name, and why not? I know yours."

It comes, creeping in the shadows. Stealthy. Healthy. A healthy doubt, suspicion. We have been here before. We have had this conversation, learned these revelations, once before. We go round in circles. We do not know her name, but we know so much more besides. Yet we do not know her name.

"What is your name?" I shout the question louder than is necessary, but she does not jump. She smiles, languid, lazy, fluid. "Well done, Gemma. I underestimated you. My apologies. It took Mary much longer, much longer than you. She could not understand. Could not break it. But you ... I underestimated you. I think we all did. Your mother, father, sister, brother. Underestimated, overestimated ... they're the same, really, aren't they? Can you tell me the difference?"

it would be so easy to fall into the enchantment again, but I will not. I must know her name, because then I will have her vulnerable.

"I want to know your name." No shouting, just repetition. Do not listen to her deliciously smooth words, Gemma. Do not be taken in by the sound of water lapping at your ears, the corners of your minds. "I want to know your name."

She regards me coolly. Dewy eyes wide as usual but a perceptiveness behind them that I missed earlier. "Gemma, I think I will like you a great deal. I cannot abide ignorance. Stupidity. Repetition." She laughs, the irony not lost on her. Not lost on me, but lost on Felicity and Ann. They exchange glances. Felicity speaks.

"Gemma, have you met her before? You have, haven't you? You've been coming here without us."

"Don't be ridiculous, Felicity."

"That was the wrong word, Gemma. Think about them. Words. They are so very beautiful. Powerful. The right word was 'arrogant'. _Don't be _arrogant_, Felicity. _Yes. That was it. You have a world full of them at your disposal, Gemma. Words. Nothing more than ink and paper, but they do so very much. Damage. Good. Damage?"

I. Need. To. Know. Her. Name.

"Your name. Your name. Your name."

"Yes, arrogant. A very good word to use. Just because I know things about Gemma does not mean I know Gemma. It could simply mean that I find Gemma far more interesting than yourself, Miss Worthington." Her face contorting with rage, Felicity is unable – unwilling? – to reply. But the creature, the girl, the thing in the river, continues. "But that is not true, Felicity. I am so very intrigued by you. All of you. Ann. Pippa. Yes, even the dead girl. I want to know everything. Stories, stories. Tell me stories."

"Your name!" It explodes out of me, and I terrify myself with the force of my will.

"Silly Gemma. Almost lost me there, didn't you?"

"Name. Name. Name." I cannot do anything but repeat myself, feeling nothing more than a crazed old fool – if only Tom could see me now! – and flick my gaze across my two best friends, desperately hoping for them to understand, pick it up. Continue. Carry.

"What is your name?"

"I'd like to know your name."

"Tell us your name!"

"What is your name?"

And she smiles, broad, true, with no malice or mockery. "Wonderful! You're all there! I was getting so tired with waiting. It's simply awful, watching when one knows and the other does not. It was the same with Sarah and Mary. Sarah understood so long before Mary. Strange. She never told her friend what to do. Cruel. Kind?"

"I want to know your name and I want to know now because otherwise-"

"Of course, of course, so rude of me to keep forgetting. It's just that there is so much to tell you, so much more interesting than my name. But here it is."

Silence.

"Name. Now."

"Verdigris."

How perfect. Verdigris. A by-product of water and copper. Her and I. Green.


	15. Learning

**Hey, well this one is really long for me, so bear with me. **

Verdigris. Verdigris. Verdigris.

"That's not a name, is it?" Ann asked. Fool.

"To us, Ann is nothing but a sound on the wind. It is the sound of a mother animal calling her young. Ann is a sound of grief. To us." She cocks her head and gazes at us out of those large, wide eyes. For a moment, just a tiny dust particle of time trapped between the sheets of this second and that, she does not look human. Her eyes are wide, wider than any I've ever seen before. They make her incredibly beautiful. It hurts to look upon her. I will never, ever be this lovely. If I could be ... imagine the power, the men falling at my feet and the way tokens of their undying love would hang like ribbons, strings of pearls and diamonds, nothing more than ribbons, from my fingers.

"Yes. My name is Verdigris."

"Do you have a surname?" Ann really can be the most thoughtless fool, and Felicity and I exchange secret smiles at her stupidity. Surname? This thing? She doesn't even have a Christian name that you accept, Ann! But our friend stares solidly, unnervingly, at the creature in the river, which throws back her head and laughs. Ann is bemused.

"No, I'm afraid not, Ann. But I know yours. Ann Bradshaw, yes? It's a sensible name."

Ann takes this as an insult. She reels, visibly hurt, and Felicity steps in. "I wish I had a name like Ann Bradshaw. It's simple. Sweet. None of this 'Felicity Worthington' rubbish. It takes men so long to say my name that they lose interest halfway through." I love Felicity. She truly can be kind, a new kind of kind that is fearless and shameless. I love her so very dearly, and for a second I ask myself what made me leave her in the woods that day? Why was I so foolish as to run away from the one creature who ever, truly, loved me? Loved me so much she was willing to give up the spinning of the world for me. It sounds cynical, but I can understand why Kartik wanted me. Yes, primitive as it may seem, we are all taught that men have certain wants, needs, with which we must comply. Kartik is no different. But Felicity actively sought me, found me and clung to me. Love. It is bitter when you taste it.

"Gemma Doyle. It's memorable. Familiar. Close. Gemma." She smiles. Gemma. It is taunting. Yes. Close, like she said. Open. It allows you to slide nearer to my affections, and then you mock me with the hard plosive of the 'd'. Like flicking the bottom of an empty wooden bucket. It stings.

I have never hated my name before this day, but now I do. Ann Bradshaw. There are no secrets, no hidden corners. The name is straight and flat, a line of string. Felicity Worthington. The name is nothing but twists and turns and gentle undulations and teasing laughter flitting around darkened corners. Wine cellars. It reminds me of a girl running through wine cellars. I wonder if the girl is my Felicity. I wonder why she is running.

"What ... what _are_ you?" My voice sounds disgusted, repulsed, but she does not take offence, does not retract with hurt. She gazes at my face; somehow opens her own, unlatches her rapture, and it spreads like pooling water across those lovely features.

"What a wonderful question. Oh, what beautiful curiosity. Gemma. Yes. That is it. That is the question. What am I? Can you trust me? Do you want to trust me? Are you going to trust me?"

Why will the thing not answer a question? Why are her sentences so wonderfully embellished? Why can she make you scream in frustration but secretly yearn for her to continue? Why can she create such marvels out of flat, dense letters? Words.

"'I am' ... there are so many ways in which you could finish that sentence – aren't there? Name, age, occupation. Characteristics, appearance. Feelings. Apologies." She looks to Ann, who snaps her eyes shut. "I am. Yes, interesting. I am a storyteller. Fabler. Yarn-spinner. Lie-teller. Raconteur ... yes, I rather like than one. Spellbinder. Dreamkeeper. Which do you choose?"

Again. So much choice. So much we have to disregard and only one thing we can carry forward into the vast unknown of the future. It seems so stupid, futile. I have an arm free. I could take so much more. Safety.

"Lie-teller."

"Spellbinder."

"Dreamkeeper."

"Lie-teller, Felicity? You think I tell lies?" she is not hurt, but amused. Felicity steps back.

"We all tell lies."

"So, are you a lie-teller too, then?"

Felicity is quiet for a very long moment. Then she speaks, and it is like crying ice. "If we're all suddenly _sharing, _then I have a story for you. Yes, all of you. When I was a child, my father hurt me. More than you can ever hurt a child. Ever. My father. He did that to me, and still would be, if I hadn't learned how to use my fists." She smiles at this, this long forgotten memory of bitter relief. Fist-fighter. "Do you know what I mean, Ann? Gemma?"

Yes. But I do not want to say, because it is like violating her all over again.

"Yes. I think you do. And do you know what? I told my mother. Yes, the first time it happened, I told my mother. I was terrified of the man, confused when he said I had asked for it. I did not understand the language of humans, the clumsiness of ignorance forced upon me by someone who knew so much more than he should. And do you know what she did? Do you?" She looks around at us, desperately. "Do you?" Her voice is broken and bitter. "She told me I was lying. She called me a liar, and she slapped me. Yes. I am a lie-teller too. We all tell lies, even if we mean them as truths."

I do not want to look at her. I do not want to see that pain, bleak and black and broken, in her eyes, do not want the responsibility of being the one to mend her. I am desperate for her, for her laughter and that ripe smile and the way her teeth glint like blades in the moonlight. I do not want this young Felicity, sweet and hopeful and fractured. I want to fix her, but I do not want to guilt of knowing that I could not.

Selfish. Yes, I know. I am English. We get everything we could ever want, and yet there is so much we are left wanting for.

"I tell stories. I spin yarns. I create magic out of nothing. Gemma, even _you_ can't do that. We are spectacular. We weave your dreams out of gossamer threads each night, each night. We whisper the lullabies that send you to sleep, not your parents. We are the one that cocoon your dreams, hold them close and embrace them like children. We protect them. We protect you.

"And when your dreams from night creep into the day, when you daydream – and more," she glances at me, a solemn smile playing with her lips, "When you see things that are not really there ... that is me, and us. We spend all day, all night and all of our years creating. It is so very tiring, but we cannot drag ourselves away from you. You entrance us."

I do not understand. I do not know why I am drawn to her, inexplicably; I want to ask her for anything, everything, to drift away on. I want cotton and linen and the smell of spices in my nose. I want rosewater and crisp white sheets and strawberries and cream in little china bowls. I want her to spin a web so strong and soft I could fall asleep in it forever and never wake up to the banalities, the vulgarities, of life. Of world. Of England. I want her to write me a story that will last until I die.

"We are magicians, magicians of words. We steal them from the mouths of babes, do you know that? We steal words. It feels so very wonderful. Because children know the truth, they know what is wrong with the world, and how they can put it right, and so we steal their words and leave them crying into the night with frustration."

"But why would you do something like that? Keep the world so broken?" Ann is furious, her face death pale and her mouth a thin red thread. Her nostrils are flared and flat at the same time. Her eyes are slits of malice. "Why can't you allow the world to become good and true, and better for everyone? Why won't you give us a chance?"

"Because then there would be no need for us. You would not need stories. You would not need dreams. We would not be able to reach you, because it is your willingness, your dependence on the hope that one day there could be something better, that keeps us alive. You need to be broken. It's just how it is."

Ann cannot bear it. She cannot bear the truth – or is it nothing more than a lie? – that she _could_ be saved, but she won't be. That the selfishness, cowardice, dignity of this creature is keeping her unhappy. Keeping her carving away at those thin, thin wrists.

"This is not a pretty world, Gemma, Ann, Felicity. This has sadness and anger too. You come here expecting to find an Eden, and I'm sorry to disappoint, but, Gemma, did you really think the magic was going to come that easily?"

Yes. I did. I had and now I am sorry. I feel foolish. Eyes on my back, staring me into the ground.

"Did you, Gemma? Did you think we could come here and everything would be fine? Did you not consider that... that it wouldn't be?"

"Are you hiding something from us, Gemma? Because you never did seem that concerned."

"No! I didn't know, all right! I didn't think, and now I know the truth, but neither did you, neither of you. You seem perfectly happy to play with the magic but fade away when the responsibility comes. For better or for worse, I have shared this magic with you – and continue to share. Rights and obligations. All of us. This is our magic."

"But it's not, is it? Not without you." Felicity has me cornered and she knows it. An expression midway between a smirk, a frown and tears flits across her face. She is triumphant, yes, but I know that for once she wishes she was wrong.

"No. You can't. But I don't come here without you, ever, so it doesn't really matter."

"Of course it doesn't matter to you, Gemma! You can do whatever you want! We're the ones that have to indulge you, else you'd never bring us again!"

"Ann! What, are you saying you don't really value my friendship, don't ... like me, juts the magic?"

"Of course not." Her voice is soft and I can see that she knows she has stepped over a line in the grass and is desperately trying to find a gap, a way back through. I will not help her. _Indulge_. I am not a child! _Indulge_. Like I am simply unbearable but they live with it. _Indulge_. It sounds greedy and slimy.

Verdigris gazes up at my face. "They speak only the truth here, Gemma. They are your friends, but you are the one with the magic, and that cannot be changed."

"Can't I give them some?" I am desperate. A wall is growing between up, sliding out of the rich dark soil, brick straight and proud. I try to catch their hands over the top but they hang back, afraid. Of what? Of me?

"That's like saying, 'Felicity, can't you please give me some charisma?' It will not work, Gemma. Yes, you can lend it to them, loan it, but it will fade away and it will not remain, not like with you."

I am beginning to wish I had never agreed to return to these hateful realms. I hate everyone surrounding me, especially that devastatingly beautiful creature, sitting happy as you like in the water in front of me. She's green. The girl is green, and I'm beginning to wonder if there was something ... unusual in the stew tonight.

"Gemma. I am not here to force a wedge between you and your friends. I do not wish to do that. No. I have been exiled from my family, from my home and everyone that I know. I have lived solitary for hundreds of years. My voice is husky. I have not spoken for so very long. Do you understand? That kind of loneliness. Do you fully realise just how important this is? How much I have gone through, have sacrificed, to give you this message? Yes? Good. Please sit, this will undoubtedly take a while."

We sit, awkward, long legged and inelegant, on the grass, as far back as we can to still hear her. Her eyes take each one of us in, not judging, not speaking, simply looking.

"Thousands of years ago, and longer, my tribe were cursed. You have to understand; we have been like this for so very long, it is hardly a curse anymore. Our parents cannot remember any different, only the oldest members of what used to be my family could tell us what it was like not to have to spellbind, dreamkeep, fable. You see," she continued, "That was our curse. We were cursed, forevermore, to tell stories. To spin yarns. For there to be no other way for our voices to be heard. I have been bound to speak like this forever. And it arouses suspicion. Mistrust. Hatred, even, sometimes. It became so very difficult for us, for all of us."

"Why were you cursed?"

There is a long silence. Verdigris does not look at anyone but the river when she speaks, and for once, it is not mellifluous, fluid, but young and stumbling. "We fell in love."

"What? I don't understand? Why were you cursed, just because you fell in love."

She looks up then, and I can tell that the water streaming down her face is not from the river, but from her sadness. "Because that was the rule. The law. The one decree to which we had to adhere. We were free, amazingly free. We could go anywhere. We could even leave the river without the ... without ... we could leave the river, Gemma. We could feel the sun beaming straight onto our skin, not through the inky depths of water. You cannot appreciate just how glorious a feeling that is, can you? Pure sunshine.

"Anyway, there were others. Thousands of different living things that populated these realms. We could move between them all, you see. Even humans could, back then. They were far less ignorant than they are today." She laughs, a bitter little thing that escapes out of her mouth like vomit. "And there were men, beautiful men. You've heard of nymphs, I suppose? Sirens. Bewitch sailors with beautiful voices and then watch as the ships get dashed to flotsam on the rocks? Always women. But there were men, too. Not quite the same, but they were so beautiful. But you were not allowed to fall in love with them, you see. No one was. Their place was not here. It was in your world. Do you understand?"

We nod. What more can we do? How can we begin to tell her what this world is like? We have known it less than half a year. She had been here hundreds.

"And one of my tribeswomen, very long ago, fell in love. Fell in love with one of these men. These forbidden men that we were not supposed to touch. She carried his child inside her for six months before they were found out. By your mother's organisation. And they killed him. They flayed him in the meadow and then tied him with ropes under the surface of the river and watched him drown. They left his corpse there for all to see, as a warning."

"Why did your tribe not untie him? Were you held back, imprisoned?" Ann really does have an inappropriate sense of the macabre, and Felicity shoots her a poisonous look.

"No. I am ashamed to admit it, but my tribe held back of their own accord. They despised him, how he had ruined and humiliated them, and they were scared of what would happen to them if they helped him. And, I suppose, some of them believed that our punishment would be less harsh if we were seen to be accepting the punishment. I cannot say that I am proud my ancestors behaved like that."

"But ... I mean, you weren't there, were you? You said you weren't born by the time the curse had ... had been placed upon you all?"

"No, Felicity, indeed you are right. I was not there. My mother was nothing more than a small sleeping ball in my grandmother's belly. I was not there. And if I had been, I ... I do not know whether I would have helped. I like to think that I would have. But they were terrified, my people, so scared about what was to happen to them. My grandmother used to tell us little ones stories of mothers killing their own children, feeding them to the monsters of the deep, just so they could escape the horrors of the coming punishment." We look repulsed, even Ann, and she smiles slightly, "But I always thought that my grandmother had a nasty imagination."

"She would have got on well with you, Ann." Felicity murmurs out of the corner of her mouth, and Verdigris laughs.

"Indeed, indeed. Anyway, it was a way of keeping us safe and in line. They were terrified one of us was going to turn out as another Selador."

"Selador?"

"That was the name of the girl who fell in love with a man. One of your men."

"What happened to her? Why did she not save him? I mean, she was supposedly in love with him." Felicity scoffs, and for the first time since I fell in love with her, I realise that she can be stupid. Verdigris' eyes narrow, and she looks more alien than ever. Her tongue flicks out from between those iridescent lips. It is inky and forked. We recoil, Felicity's eyes and nostrils flaring in horror.

"Don't speak of us like that, Felicity! If there is one thing that causes us more intrinsic offence than any accusation, it is the accusation that we do not know how to love. Do you understand? Do you?" she addresses the question not just to Felicity, but also to Ann and I, and even the trees that surround us. Her jagged voice echoes long after her face has recovered its serene beauty.

"We love truer and purer and harder than anyone else you will ever find in this world, or the next. We love with more passion and conviction than any mere human. Mere mortal."

"More than her lover?" Felicity is playing so dangerous a game it feels as though the very air we breathe is turning thin and flat. She is gambling away our safety as we sit and talk of love with a curious little mermaid.

"Yes. She loved more than her lover. It is tragic, and sometimes unbearable, but there it is."

"So why did she not save him?"

"They captured her. They did so much evil to her that I can barely speak of it."

"What? What did they do?" Ann leans forwards, a ghoulish expression on her face, and I see a glimpse of Ann that I am afraid of. I am sure that if she found my body, dagger in my heart, one frosty morning, she would want to fully explore the grisly find before alerting anyone to the fact that I may possibly be slightly dead. It puts a perverse grin on my face.

"They caught her and her lover one moonlight night. They were ... coupling. You know about coupling, yes?"

We all nod. Ann goes an amusing beetroot in complexion – well, at least now she has colour, what she's always hankered after – and Felicity licks her lips in a way that is terribly seductive. I do not look at her.

"They caught them, and dragged him away, and publicly tortured him, and then killed him. They chained her to a rock, looking down at her drowning lover, and that is when we are told that she died. She was broken. She didn't not care what happened to her anymore. Because it is the most dangerous thing in the world to do to one of us, destroy love. It is sacred, and cannot be replicated, ever. Each love is unique, and we used to delight in that. Some of us still do."

"So, does your tribe not fall in love anymore?" Felicity seems terribly sad, and I see a curious kind of longing in her eyes. Is she lusting after their self-control? Their icy minds and hardened hearts?

"What actually happened to that girl, though? Selador?"

"So many questions, all at once. I will try and answer them as best I can. No, we have taught ourselves how to not love. They think it is safer for the young ones. I was exiled because ... because ... I will get onto that soon enough. Yes, Felicity, we are taught not to love. As to whether it is capable for my tribe to still love, I cannot say. If they can, they hide it well. They _did_ hide it well.

"Now, Ann, what happened to Selador after she witnessed the execution of her lover is still little known. Your tribe –" and here she nods towards me, and, for the first time since meeting this creature, I feel the dislike pooling in her eyes, "-were so ashamed by what you did to her that you kept it secret, and when that girl arrived her all those years ago, then, well, it was closed, was it not, until your mother died and you came to us. We have never been quite sure what happened to Selador, but ... I both want to know, and do not want to know in equal measures. All I will say to you, can say to you, is that..." she trails off, infuriatingly, and I can see the desperation in Ann's eyes. _Go on, tell her something worse than the horrors she knows. Go on, tell her how this woman suffered far worse than herself, that she should really be grateful for everything she had. Go on. I dare you._ But surprisingly, it is Felicity who coaxes her on. Verdigris throws a quick golden look in my direction, as if warning me to brace myself for something.

"I feel I must warn you that what happened could ... could possibly turn into the stuff off nightmares. We have grown up with the story – the legend, I should say – and it was as much a lullaby to our ears as a horror. Please. I feel I must warn you."

I have the sudden, wild urge to drown myself in that merry tinkling river, just to avoid the coming words. But I am not quick enough. It turns my stomach and even Felicity lets out a sharp cry, as though mortally wounded.

"The corpse of her child was found several weeks later. It was almost ... unrecognisable. It was clearly not fully-grown. We assumed it had been ripped from her belly, and that would have killed her, undoubtedly."

The cold heat of nausea rises in my throat. I can taste the disgust when I swallow. Disgust. Abhorrence. Shame.

It was my ancestors, and my mother's ancestors, who had done that to Selador. To Selador and her lover and her unborn child. I look down at my hands, and for a second, juts for an instant, they are covered in the blood of a dead babe. I retch. Noticing, verdigris smiles sadly and reaches out a hand. The cool of her palm against my cheeks settles something deep inside of me, and the sickness subsides. "The mind can play such awful tricks on us, Gemma. Such awful games. You have to distinguish truth from lie and act on that."

There is an empty, pulsing silence as each girl retreats into the comfort of her own thoughts. In my mind, I pull a dusty blanket from a wooden shelf and wrap it tight around me. It does not help. The orangey glow of the light through the fabric speaks to me of children in the womb. Tears run down my face and fall with a mournful plop! into the river.

After too long a silence, Ann speaks. "What was the name of the lover?"

"We never found out."

"Well, what was the name of the group of when to whom he belonged?"

"It was a curious name, sounded foreign and hard ... cold. Oh, what was it?" there is a pause as we gaze expectantly on that beautiful face. It is still just as lovely but we are no longer trapped under that spell. We have seen the sadness and anger and hate trapped on those smooth features, and we wish to get away. "Oh, this is just too exasperating!" without warning, she dives under the clinging membrane of the water. I reach out a hand to grasp the last floating tendrils of her hair but she is gone.

Felicity stares, open-mouthed. "Well, that was unbelievably rude!". Her hand finds mine in the grass, and I know that tonight we will be sharing a bed – not sharing bodies and moans, but filling empty space and warming cold fingers. We love each other, and that does not simply encompass lust. I want her to be happy. To fall asleep at night easily. I want Felicity for the rest of my life, and yet I want Kartik also. More? Also.

"no, she's coming back." Ann points to the slick mass of what I had originally taken to be river-moss, but was actually the silky hair of the girl. She resurfaced and flits her way across the water.

"Terribly sorry, I often find that a dive down the river helps to clear my thoughts." She smiles, but it is somehow insincere. Do I trust her? I'm not quite sure. "Anyway, I've remembered the name of that group of men. It was 'Rakshana'."

The name means nothing, and yet why is there a tugging deep within me? I dismiss it. What a dangerous move.

**IF you've read 'Silk and Diamonds' (which you really do need to, to understand this story – and if you haven't, READ IT) then you will know that it all panned out quite differently, with Gemma not knowing anything about The Order or Rakshana – don't worry, they're still in the story, but more so this one. Now, go and read 'Silk and Diamonds'. It will make me happy. And Kartik.**

**Very happy indeed.**

**He's actually sitting here right next to me with what we shall call a 'large smile on his face'.**

**What a lovely smile...**


	16. Dancing

We leave Verdigris, swimming indolently downstream, promising to return, promising to hear the rest of her tale

We leave Verdigris, swimming indolently downstream, promising to return, promising to hear the rest of her tale. We are cold and shivering, although the setting sun is doing its best to warm us. Felicity walks away from us, towards the statue. She will not look at me.

Sometimes, I think Felicity is nothing more than a magpie. She is irresistibly attracted to beauty, beauty and that ... that essence of 'different' that brought us all together. Something sparkles in the grass and Felicity must have it. She cannot control herself. Pippa. Verdigris. Me. We were all special, for all different reasons and it is tearing me apart watching her being torn.

Sometimes I am so tired all I can do is crawl away inside myself for comfort. I turn thousand of corners, each leading towards the centre of that brilliant maze, to oblivion.

That night, we are all irritable, for no apparent reason. Felicity is constantly stifling yawns during conversations, until she is finally reprimanded by Mrs Nightwing. Miss Moore glances down to the table to us, to me, and narrows her eyes. I look away. I disgrace myself daily, and it is so very wearing. These days, I cannot even meet a glance.

The night is close, and I cannot sleep. I see the shadows under my eyes, and what they become each night. A ghost. Vampires. I am becoming the monster my youth was so scared of.

Swing. Vine. Mud between toes. The world does not move as it should for me, it does not spin slick and well oiled. I see the things I feel rather than feeling them, and what scares me more than anything is how disinterested I am. The gypsy camp is burning away merrily. Dancing, around the fire. Laughter, music. Foreign tongues. I want one to explore me.

It breaks my heart to see Kartik dancing with a young woman. She is different to me, darker skinned and plump, with sparkling dark eyes and a full smile. A pattern skin. Warmth. This is a beauty which girls like me will never know, and it speaks of modesty and easiness, and safety. His lips curve as she says something to him, and I watch as they dance ever faster. He kisses her cheek. He catches my eye.

I am running as I have never run before, and it irritates me that I am more scared of humiliation, of disgust, of him, than of the countless horrors I have witnessed. Those creatures behind those curtains. My mother, white and dead, my sister, the only one I have ever known, turn her back on me. No, it is him, and always him.

I am not sure if he is following me. I hear no other footsteps, and so I slow, and turn. The dance carries on, and I see him forget me.

That night, I crept into bed and wept myself into beautiful solitude. The voices, the warm, small hand, the final shout. None of it moves me. If he had to make a choice, I know it would never be me.

Although they ask me to, I refuse to take Ann and Felicity back to the realms the following evening. I point out the half moon bruises, a pair each, and finally they relent. We need to sleep. We are growing.

Whilst Ann undresses, I wander along the corridor to Felicity's room. She is waiting for me, smiling. "I knew you had a reason for wanting Ann to go to bed."

This is not the comfort I want, but Felicity knows no other, and so I sit and slide my tongue along her collarbone and make her moan, low and guttural. Her fingers are so skilled now at corset strings. Almost as quick as Kartik. The tears come to my eyes, but I will not let them break me. My chemise is sheer. Her breasts are small and wide apart. I see the beauty of her English skin so painfully it slices through me. All I am is freckles and dusty lips and Indian eyes. She pushes me slowly back onto the bed and undresses herself. Her bones shine so clearly through the translucency of her skin. I see the animal groove of each rib fall away almost comically to the concave expanse of her stomach. I have never been this thin, and I am envious. Her hair falls around her shoulders. She kisses me, and Ann falls asleep, in the empty room that she has learnt not to question.

I do not know what is wrong with us, with both of us. Why we are driven to hide away inside each other. Why we pretend that this is enough. When I kiss Felicity, it feels as though – and yes, this may sound crude – there is something missing inside me. There should be a way of joining us together, the way there is between man and woman. With Felicity and I all there are is aching spaces. Our flesh does not fit.

Miss Moore asks for a quiet word after breakfast. Ann leaves, shooting baleful looks over her shoulder, as though it is my fault Miss Moore does not wish to speak to her too. No one does.

"Miss Doyle, forgive me if I'm wrong, but you have been seeming rather... drained, these past few days. Weeks. are you having trouble sleeping?"

"Yes, I'm afraid. I'm not quite sure what it is. These last couple of nights have been awfully stuffy." The lie falls heavy and cold from my tongue. She continues.

"Your two – closest – friends also seem exhausted. This could not be connected with you, by any chance?" her tone is friendly and light, but the gaze is solid.

"I really wouldn't know, Miss Moore. As you know, Felicity has a different room, and Ann ... well, I don't know."

"Interesting. Well, you will let me know if you happen to remember what could be causing such tiredness, won't you, Gemma?" she knows I am lying. Curiously enough, it does not touch me. I smile, nod, and begin to walk away.

"Oh, and Gemma?" Turn. "I understand that you are young girls, and you think secret midnight jaunts around a darkened school are a fine thing, but let me remind you that your father is paying a great deal of money to turn you into an acceptable young lady. That I why you are here. I can remember what it was like to be sixteen, but that does not mean I approve of any late night wanderings. Understood?"

what can you say to something like that. Strangely, the one thing I want to say is that I thought she was my friend.

I am losing them by the handful each time I close my eyes, and it stings bitter.


	17. Watching

I dream of him. Felicity and Ann grow angrier by the night, each time I refuse to pander to their wants. I recounted Miss Moore's revelation, but Felicity pooh-poohed it off and Ann, though initially traumatised, follows in her footsteps. It irritates me, how susceptible she is. How clever she thinks she is, and yet how stupid. I feel almost embarrassed for her. I am sure Felicity can see it too.

In my dreams, we are in a darkened library, a solitary candle flickering across the writhing muscles of his back as he presses me closer into a bookshelf. We are hidden from view, and no one could find us here anywhere, shelter. My clothes slide from my skin like butter. He lifts me gently, wraps my thighs around his waist. Shifts. I sink down onto him and the rest is not important, for he is inside me and I am inside him and I am never, ever coming out.

I receive, curiously enough, a letter, from Tom. He is busy at work in London, but found it in his heart, as he puts it, to pen his sullen little sister a letter. He goes on at great, boring length about the state of the economy and how one particular patient of his is improving, but the correspondence only becomes interesting when he decides to tell me of a charming young girl who he would like to court. Her name is Lydia – a heavy name, he says, and it does not suit her – and she is everything he could ever want. Beautiful. Intelligent yet demure. A fine painter, competent flower-arranger – that made me snigger into my breakfast in a most unladylike fashion – and above all, with a small fortune behind her name, an only child with a father too doting to leave the money to anyone else. I almost cry with fondness when I read the line '._.. and what is simply marvellous, Gemma, is that her father recently had a heart attack and has been given mere months to live. I could be living in a mansion before I'm twenty-five, Gemma, and wouldn't that be something?_' He does, however, ask me not to repeat that sentiment to anyone. I decide that I shan't. It is mine, and I will treasure it like a Rajah's jewel.

Art. French. Music. Deportment. Dancing. Does any of it ever really matter? Doesn't anyone ever want to say that they could find a husband through their natural charm, the interest of their companionship, their generosity of spirit? You see, I myself cannot say it with smirking! I myself do not believe it to be true. I sicken myself to the point of despair. At night, ,after I have avoided Felicity and exchanged awkward goodnights with Ann, when I have listened to the steady, nasal sound of her breathing and am sure she is asleep, I steal through the soft protection of the night and watch Kartik dance. Each night, the same girl. He does not see me again, or, rather, does not wish to, for he fixes his eyes firmly on the immediate. Smiles. Flickers. Music. Laughter.

It is one night, one night of so many, that I notice the slight bulge in the girls belly.


	18. Hating

It is evident that Kartik can feel it pressing into his stomach, for he makes a show of bending down and stroking it, talking to it. The others laugh, and her eyes sparkle with joy. Their eyes are so similar, it kills me. The fire twinkles precociously in my eyes. There is nothing left in the world that I do not hate.

I have never known a pregnant woman, and cannot say how many months she has left. The tears will not come. I still cannot quite believe it to be true. Kartik is barely older than me. This girl looks perhaps my age. Son they will have a child, and maybe, just maybe, for an instant, Kartik will think of calling it Gemma. But that instant will pass, and instead they may choose a proper name, a gypsy name, and there will be no place left for me in his heart.

He lets his guard slip infrequently, but he lets it slip now, and he sees me. My eyes are drawn to his uncontrollably – unwillingly. I can see the thoughts, the little patterns and lines, the pieces of a jigsaw. They are all on his face, and there is something wrong.

I will not wait for him to reach me. To try and explain himself. I will not stand, foolish, young, and watch him spin a lie, another lie, that I will see through instantly, but will choose to believe. I will run far away from him, and I will never think of him again. I do not know why I did not choose Felicity in that instant. I think of her face, closed and blank, each time I refuse. Locked. If I am not careful, I will lose everything I ever held dear. I must run to her now and do whatever it takes to stay loved.

I hear him excuse himself, feel their curious eyes sweeping through the undergrowth around me, but I am too far gone for them to notice. In so many more ways than one. His feet crack through the ground behind me, I can hear his panting, so similar to the noises he made during lovemaking, too similar. I want to break. But he never calls my name. Not once.

I make it almost all the way to the school before I have to stop. Although my corset is sitting pretty across the stool in our room, it is the cage of my ribs that forces my lungs to slow. I get panicky when I cannot breathe. I have to stop.

Of course, he approaches. I look down, my hair falling like a fiery curtain across my line of vision. If I cannot see him, he cannot see me. I am a child. I am a child, on my knees in a leaf-strewn clearing, the twinkling lights of Spence so frustratingly close. My hands grip the mulch around me, my lungs heaving. The bubble filling my chest subsides. I close my eyes, rise awkwardly to my feet and try to walk away. He catches my shoulder. It almost hurts.

"Gemma, please. I have to explain it."

"You don't, Kartik. It's fine, honest. I knew something was eventually going to have to happen. It will for me, too." It was almost a plea. Please believe me. Please believe that you could never be the only one, that I could learn to love another man, let him inside my bed, and inside me. Please believe me that I could be that happy with another mans child inside my stomach. Please, Kartik.

"No, you don't understand."

"Kartik, you don't have to explain yourself. Let me go. Please." I try to wriggle free, but my refusal to listen, to hear and finally, worn down, accept his explanations, rises in him in anger. He grips my shoulders, shakes me a little.

"Please go back to her. She will worry."

"No! Gemma, for God's sake, listen to me!" he tries to hold me close but the tears are pouring fast now, and I feel ashamed. I wrench myself away from the only place I have ever wanted to be. He swipes, aiming for my shoulder again, but his palm reaches my neck, and tightens. My head is being pulled back. My hair is pressed tight against my head and is stinging tears to my eyes. I will not blink.

"Gemma, it ... it is not mine. She is my sister. She has come over, recently. She is married – he was there, too, and they are expecting a child, and she wanted to be with me. We have always been very close. When I left, to follow you, it was very hard. For her, for me. She lost Amar as well as me."

If he is expecting a reply, he is disappointed. It may seem curious, but I do not believe him. It seems so well thought out – say it is a sister, she will accept that – she will _want_ to accept that, and that is what will push her to. A sister. Odd, that he has never mentioned her before.

"It's fine, Kartik, honest. Please. It's fine." He shakes his head, but so do I.

"You believe me, don't you? I swear I'm telling the truth, Gemma! However much I am angry with you at the moment, I would never, never lie about something so important."

"Let go of me!" My voice is shrill and I don't recognise it. Panic. Hysteria. Anger and grief balled into one. Inward turning. His eyes start, and he steps back. Removes the hand from my neck. Heat rushes, almost pain. I know it shall bruise, and more than anything I am angry with him for forcing me to explain away another something else. You liar, Gemma Doyle. You didn't fall from the bed in the night. You've never fallen from a bed in your entire life.

"Gemma, I swear. I swear." His voice is low and soothing now, and it is all I want to fold myself into him, give in, let him lie to me, I will drink them me in. I have always been crippled by pride. It is something I get from my mother.

"Gemma. Let me show you." For the first time, I can feel the alcohol seeping out of him, through him. It is what drove him to anger, and it is now pushing him to affection, to tenderness and fingertips. His weight guides me to a tree, and although I struggle, he is relentless. I am in only my nightgown. There are no corsets to untangle, no petticoats to shed. The transition between empty and full is quite quick. Smooth. I sigh despite myself. I hate him for being able to do this to me.

It is slow and tender, and he kisses me all the while. Only towards the end, when our movement becomes meaningful and charged, when it has ebbed away and we are catching our breath, do I slap him. I hope I leave a mark that will never truly fade. It is no more than what he has done to me.


	19. Breaching

My face is pale and shadowy as I make my way to breakfast the following morning. Felicity will not look at me. I hardly care. Madame LeFarge makes a comment about the shadows under my eyes being unseemly. I smile weakly; mumble something about a sleepless night. Stuffy. Close. I am hardly here. Miss Moore has eyes that concentrate on her breakfast and follow me up the stairs at the same time. I can hardly bring myself to look up. There is something in my throat, blocking my air and any words of repentance. What guilt.

I wash my face and clean my teeth as I stare, glassy eyed, out across the back lawns. The forest rises like a proper English forest should, and it raises something inside me which girls are meant to stifle. Anger. Why, for God's sake, why couldn't that one forest disobey? But of course, nothing ever will. We are English.

There is a girl in a white dress standing at the edge. Her hair is glossy and dark. Ringlets. Porcelain skin across delicate cheekbones. A laughing mouth. For a second, just an instant, she is Pippa.

Then a swat, ginger girl, who I know goes by the name of Katherine, approaches, and they link arms, and they are so much younger than I ever was. Suddenly, I feel the urge to protect them – just these two – from whatever evils the world has to offer. I will not let them touch me.

It is at this moment of courageous philanthropy that I feel the eyes of another burning steadily into me. I glance almost unconsciously back to the edge of the forest, and although I cannot see him, I am sure he can see me.

I retreat.

We have no lessons this afternoon. It is cold and crisp, but the sky is a sharp wintry blue, and if you wrap up warm it is actually quite pleasant. This is weather unlike any I have ever known. The dew in the morning freezes onto the grass and you actually leave little shadows, frosty footprints behind you. My breath stains the air cloudy. I smile in spite of myself.

Felicity has a singing lesson, and so Ann and I make our way down to the path that runs alongside the forest and curls round the corner almost protectively. There is a slight decline, and we find ourselves hurrying along a little faster than is quite comfortable. Forgetting the slick ice on the ground, I try to stop, but instead manage to slip over entirely, skidding on my behind a few feet until my indignation shudders me to a freezing stop. Ann is beside herself with laughter, especially when I stand and find dead leaves and resolute blades of grass clinging to the back of my cloak. I swear under my breath. The tears are almost running down her cheeks. Quite hysterical.

"I thought I left the savages behind in India," I say snippily, and I regret it soon enough, for whenever I remember my home country, it is with fondness and regret. I sound unbearably like my grandmother, and it makes me wince. Ann sniggers some more and I find myself joining in. Honestly, if the Queen could se us now, two young ladies attending one of the most prestigious schools in the country, snorting merrily away like horses in a paddock. A question pops into my head, and spills out from my blue lips before I can think.

"Do you believe in God, Ann?"

Her laughter dies away. I am such a fool.

"What?"

"Well, do you? I was just wondering."

"You can't _not_ believe in God, Gemma, just like you can't not believe in ... oh, I don't know ... Spence! It simply exists. So does God. Doesn't he?"

I sense the small 'h', and press my point. "But how do you know? How do you know for sure? After everything we've seen ... all of it. We've never seen God, never met him. We don't know for sure. We can't."

She is silent for a very long time.

"But ... we must have come from somewhere, and that's God, isn't it?"

"There is another theory." She knows of what I am talking, and she opens her mouth, ready to scoff.

"That stupid man's idea about monkeys? Gemma, really!" her tone is disparaging, and more from this than anything else, I reply.

"His name's Darwin, and, actually, I believe him. All the evidence points that way."

"But monkeys, Gemma, really! I mean, well, really!"

"I do believe you've pressed your point, but I'm afraid it's simply what I believe. And I'm not sure if I believe in God." I glance slyly at her blotchy face out of the corner of my eyes, waiting for the round loose o! of her mouth and the watery fire glowing agitatedly in her eyes, but there is none. She seems, instead, to shrink in upon herself, and her voice is very sweet and young when she speaks.

"I'm not sure if I believe in God, either. You won't tell, will you?" Shake. "It's just that life has been so unbearably cruel to me at times. I have no parents, no one in the world who can ever really love me, or protect me. And Spence ... I would rather have lived in a London slum all my life than come so close to it and be turned away at the very end."

She is small. I never noticed it before. Ann is relatively short, and her plumpness does not look so unattractive when she speaks from the heart. She slouches a little as she walks. I know how she speaks, and I know how it must sting.

"I'm sorry, Ann, I didn't want to upset you. Really, truly. It's just that my mother never took me to church; I never really got an understanding of your English God. I just wondered. I've never felt that spiritual."

She nods, a slight, resigned movement of the head, and then we are silent, walking awkwardly in just-out-unison for several more seconds, until Ann becomes a genius and makes a small, sad, ghostly 'whoooo' through her lips.

I stop walking, stare incredulously at her, and burst into laughter.

I have never known such infantile friendship. It thrills me to the bone.

He comes to me that night, through the darkness, landing with barely a sound as he covers my mouth and pins my arms to my sides with his weight. Anger straddles me.

"Gemma, for God's sake, this has happened enough by now for it to scare you no longer. Don't scream. Please, don't scream." He takes his palm gingerly from my face. I turn away and shut my eyes.

"Gemma – what the hell is it this time?"

"Leave me alone. I was asleep, or does that mean nothing to you?"

"Gemma. It's been breached. There is a girl in the water. She says her name is Verdigris, and she's looking for you."


	20. THIS IS NOT A CHAPTER

**OK guys. I KNOW this is not exactly an update or a new chapter or anything, but please bear with me, I'm currently doing exams and I really hope I will be able to continue this soon. But, but but butbutBUT, I have important, potentially life changing news.**

**TODAY I MET A MAN NAMED KARTIK.**

**I was like "Fojfgiofgnifdgidnhinghkgjdgn it's nice to meet you," whilst in my head I was like "NDIOPMSOGPJDHIOPJFHOKGLJHKLGJHKJDOFPJOPJKSHOP IT'S NICE TO MEET YOU." Sigh. I am the picture of elegance and grace.**

**Anyway, just thought I would share that with you all. Thought you might appreciate the Kartik-ness.**

**Also, if any of you are NCIS fans, please pop over there and see some of my stuff, because it's what I'm focussing on more after that SHOCKING season finale and I'm really pleased with some of my stuff. So yes. I'm sorry this is not a chapter. But enjoy its contents nevertheless.**


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